[ { "id": 204821, "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-1964", "page_number": 124, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "104\n\nV. R. BURKHARDT\n\nIts speed gives the butterfly immunity from the collector except when feeding, or, in the case of the female ovipositing. The commonest food plant is Cretaeva religiosa, a deciduous tree with large clumps of white and yellow flowers. The larva, when irritated, draws in its legs and elevates its head and the forepart of the body. Its laterally swollen anterior segments and small head give it the aspect of a snake, the illusion being enhanced by a darting movement towards the intruder as if about to strike like a cobra.\n\nIn propagating its species the butterfly is very improvident for the females continue laying their eggs right up to December, when the leaves fall. Pupae and larvae in all stages consequently perish. There was a great dearth of this species in the autumn of 1962 as Typhoon Wanda, which struck the Colony on 1st September, stripped a large number of the Cretaeva trees. Though they were again in full leaf three weeks later the rhythm of reproduction was broken, and the same applied to the food plant. On the anniversary of the typhoon it again shed its leaves, and flowered a month later. In Stanley, at any rate, the females of H. glaucippe did not begin to frequent the tree till late summer, and the general scarcity continued throughout the autumn of 1963.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206634, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 182, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "176\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\ncyclical characters of the year.\" Hodous appears either to be confusing T'ai Sui and Kou Mang, or to be giving T'ai Sui yet another alias.\n\nIn T'aip'ing in Malaya two images of mud bulls are to be seen standing on a pile of paper hell money on the altar beside T'ai Sui. The reason for their inclusion on the altar was not known by the temple keeper nor by the devotees who said that they had always been in that position as far back as anyone could recall. (See Plate 15).\n\nThe Rev. Wm Milne4 in Ningpo in the mid 1840s noted \"the festival of the Beating in of Spring\" when on the first day of spring the Chief Magistrate of the city beat the \"god of spring\", a multi-coloured paper ox, which was then torn to pieces by the crowd, for luck. Milne claimed to have seen this same ceremony elsewhere in Central China, and said that in some districts the bull is made of mud. “The colouring varies as laid down in the Peking annual book of ceremonies. The variations in colours such as red horns, black tail and feet, white body, blue head and neck are regarded as prognosticating the portents of the coming year. The amount of black signifies sickness, blue winds, white rain and floods, red fire and yellow the fruits of the earth. There are also a number of smaller mud oxen mainly sold for household good fortune.”\n\nThe Rev. Milne also reported that “the \"god of spring\" was seen in the shape of a youthful human image, the son of an early Emperor. He too is attired in a fashion prophetic of the fortune of the coming year: bareheaded predicted cold weather, and white robe augurs a dry year etc.\" This youthful image is almost certainly T'ai Sui. In all temples where he was observed in the \"scroll or bell-holding\" two-armed version, his image was seen very frequently to be balanced on wads, sometimes very high wads, of hell money. This is the paper money purchased from temple keepers to be burnt by devotees for the use of deceased members of the family in the Underworld. This custom is usually only to be seen in temples under wealth gods, but in the case of T'ai Sui, the wads are offerings to T'ai Sui for protection and not for transmission by burning to deceased relatives. Shyrock in his Temples of Anking says hell money is burnt for use by ancestors and is never presented to Gods. It would appear to be otherwise in Central and South China.\n\n4 Milne, W. C., Life in China (London, Routledge, 1857).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207002, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "DOGS AND HORSES IN ANCIENT CHINA\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\n67\n\nPrimary Sources\n\nChou Li, Ssu-pu Ts'ung K'an, ts'e 9-14, Commercial Press, Shanghai, 1920-1922.\n\nMu Tien Tzu Chuan, Ssu-pu pei-yao, ts'e 1129, Chung-hua shu-chu, Shanghai, 1927-1935.\n\nSsu Ma Ch'ien, Shi Chi; Er. Shih-Ssu pen, Wu Chou Tung, Wen Shu Chu, Shanghai, 1903.\n\nSecondary Sources\n\nANDERSSON, J. G. Children of the Yellow Earth, Kegan Paul, London 1934.\n\nBIOT, Edouard Le Tcheou Li, Wen Tien Ko, Peking 1929, (reprinted 1939).\n\nBURKHARDT, V. R. Chinese Creeds and Customs, South China Morning Post press, Hong Kong 1955 and 1958.\n\nCHANG Kwang-chih The Archeology of Ancient China, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1963.\n\nCHAVANNES, Edouard Les Memoires Historiques de Se Ma Ts'ien, Brill, Leiden (reprinted 1939).\n\nCHENG Te-K'un Archeology in China, Vols. I, II, III, Heffer, Cambridge 1960.\n\nCOUVREUR, S. Le Li Ki, Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique, Ho Kien Fu 1913.\n\nCREEL, Herrlee G. Studies in Early Chinese History, Kegan Paul, London 1938.\n\nDUBS, Homer The History of the Former Han by Pan Ku, Waverly Press, Baltimore 1955.\n\nERKES, Eduard (1) \"Der Hund im Alten China\" in T'oung Pao, Vol. 37 (1944) 186-225.\n\n(2) \"Das Pferd im Alten China\" in T'oung Pao, Vol. 36 (1940-42) 27-36.\n\nKARLGREN Grammata Serica, Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Bulletin No. 12, Stockholm, 1940.\n\nLAUFER, Berthold Chinese Pottery of the Han Dynasty, Brill, Leiden 1909.\n\nSCHAFER, Edward The Golden Peaches of Samarkand, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963.\n\nSCHINDLER, Bruno (1) \"The Development of the Chinese Conception of Supreme Being\" in Hirth Anniversary Vol., 298-366.\n\n(2) \"On Travel, Wayside and Wind Offerings\" in Asia Major, Vol. 45 (1924) 624-656.\n\nYETTS, Perceval \"The Horse; A factor in Early Chinese History\" in Eurasia Septentrionalis Antique, Vol. 9 (1934) 231-235.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207264, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1975", "page_number": 32, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "24\n\nJOHN T. MYERS\n\nincantation around the cauldron. On they go for hours in darkness. The voices at times grow louder and the drum beat more vigorous. All at once the medium who has begun to sway his body from side to side as if to invite supernatural influences begins to be violently affected. He dances and leaps in the air, the beat of the drum becomes more rapid, and the voices of the men louder and shriller. The wildest confusion reigns. It seems as though some horrid scene from the infernal regions were being enacted on earth and the devils had been let loose for a time to carry on their orgies among men.\"14\n\nWe have quoted at length the 19th century description because it is our opinion even the most zealously anti-pagan observer may have a difficult time identifying it as essentially the same type of ritual enacted each evening at Tai Wong Ye Temple. Scheduled at 10 p.m. for the convenience of a working class population the ceremony incorporates little of the din and frenzy which characterized its Amoy counterpart.\n\nOn almost any given evening shortly before 10 o'clock petitioners begin arriving at the temple. The number commonly varies from 10 to 15, with a distinct majority being middle-aged and elderly women. After burning joss sticks and offering prayers to the deity, petitioners at the direction of various tan sang who tend the altar, inscribe their name, birthday, and the names of other family members on a red sheet of paper. This accomplished they gather around a red table in the middle of the shrine chamber. The atmosphere is casual as greetings and gossip are exchanged between them. On the red table is a can of red paint, a slender paint brush, a rubber stamp, a stack of yellow paper slips, a rather large compartmentalized box with various types of herbs, and a basin of foo shui or \"sacred water\" #k. Near the table is a red, throne-shaped chair.\n\nAt approximately 10 p.m. the medium enters the temple. After greeting those present he approaches the table and takes a sip of the sacred water. Continuing to stand before the table, he begins to move his head from side to side. He then starts pounding the table with his fists while emitting loud guttural grunts. After a few moments he adopts a stylized posture signifying to all present the identity of the possessing deity. The tan sang provide him with the throne-like chair and he sits to hear the petitions of worshippers. The possession is usually effected within two minutes of his sipping the sacred water.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208070, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "UNDER ALTARS\n\n93\n\nenter the homes of the beater and her family. (Incidentally, they did the same with the \"small people\" a common man (Hsiao Jen A) who are gossips causing untold trouble. They are depicted on a black-printed charm as a row of men, and represent anyone who bears a grudge or gossips about their neighbours.)\n\nThough Ch'ao Chow and Hoklo temples have no Under Altars, keepers in temples used by these communities claim that other unspecified Hoklo and Ch'ao Chow temples do have them. In practice, however, most have a stone White Tiger, blackened with age, crouching on the floor in front of one of the secondary altars. In one Ch'ao Chow temple, what at first glance could be confusing, were two large and untarnished black and yellow striped tigers seated before the temple's Earth God. According to the watchman, they were normal tigers and not White Tigers, awaiting his orders.\n\nThe Green Horse\n\nThe second is the Green Horse (*) who occasionally has a groom though, rarely, a rider. Not surprisingly the horse actually is green, although it is possibly called so because Liu (green) is a homophone for \"lucky\". In a few temples he is colloquially referred to as the \"Money Horse\". He is to be found in several temples where there is no Under Altar, no White Tiger, and no Local Wealth God. Green Horse stand on their own four legs and are seldom made of a permanent material, though two in Macau and one in Hong Kong are made of what appears to be painted concrete about half life size. Most are coloured paper pasted over a bamboo frame, frequently decorated with tall, gold paper floral crowns and red rosettes.\n\nThe Green Horse is variously offered prayers and incense for assistance in keeping in touch with distant relatives, for bearing petitions to unapproachable Gods, for stopping quarrels and rumours and, according to some, for wealth. Some even refer to the Green Horse as the Protector of Women. Many Green Horses seen in temples are heavily ensnared or trussed with long, fine red (or on very rare occasions, white) cords bound around the forelegs. Occasionally pairs of red chopsticks are bound to the Horse by these red cords. Both the chopsticks and the cords are charms, placed there by wives who pray that their travelling or erring husbands will be faithful to them, or return immediately to them leaving the...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210293, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 264, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "243\n\nThe content of the invitation card is: \"The overseas Chinese in Japan will hold a 3-days-4-nights Pu Tu, for the sake of establishing luck by offering and helping all the imprisoned spirits of the water and the earth. The meeting will take place at the Kwan T'i Temple in Kobe city. Please come to the \"Tan\" (altar) to present incense sticks during the 14th, 15th, and 16th of the 7th moon. (1st, 2nd and 3rd of September 1982).” The card was red in colour.\n\n9\n\nThe 13th day and the 17th day of the 7th moon were not mentioned in the invitation card.\n\n10 The Lantern Floating ritual in Japanese is \"To Ro Nagashi', which means to float lanterns(s) (to the sea). During the Japanese Obon, lanterns are sent off on the last day of the festival. Through this, the ghosts and the ancestors are all sent back. During the Kobe festival, the ritual, according to the committee members, was to send off the \"wandering ghosts or those who are not worshipped by anyone (= Mu Zhi Kuai)\". However it seems confusing because after the floating ritual, they continued to give offering to the hungry ghosts as well as to the ancestors for two more nights, and the tablets of the wandering spirits were still inside the Tao Ch'ang. A similar ritual practised in Hong Kong during the Chiao festival is called 'Fong Shui Dang' (t, sending off the water lanterns), which is parallel with the 'Fong Luk Dang\" (PW10, put on the street lights) ritual. The rituals are to invite all the water and earth spirits to attend the offering during the Pu Tu or 'Sai Tai Yau* (*9A, to worship the numerous spirits) of the Chiao festival). The prayer book the Obaku Buddhists used for their morning and night rituals is \"Obaku Zenlin Choobo Kashoo\" (R). The priests called this daily work \"Zenlin Kashoo\" (M).\n\nSee below.\n\n12\n\nPlate 21.\n\n13\n\nPlates 22, 23.\n\n14 The \"Pang' was a book-form name-list in yellow. It had 8 pages with an introduction explaining the reason for holding a Pu Tu. (The introduction is printed in the Appendix).\n\n15 See the introduction to the Pang printed in the Appendix.\n\n16 The beach is at the western end of the Prefecture.\n\n17 Plate 24.\n\n18\n\nSee footnote 10.\n\n19\n\n20\n\nPlate 25.\n\nThe book used for the ritual was \"Yoga Enkoo Kahan\" (1⁄2μÅμ) which is similar to that used in Hong Kong during the 'Sai Tai Yau' ritual. According to an old taoist in Hong Kong, Mr. Lam Pui ( ), the gesture is called \"Poh Yuk” (Z, to break Hell), and through this the ghosts are released and able to come for reincarnation and cross over.\n\n21 Plates 26, 27, 28.\n\n22\n\nNo meat was allowed in the festival area. However, meat was presented at the Ming-che VII. One informant explained that it was because the dead like meat, and one committee member sighed and told me that \"We have no way, because they are from the other Provinces (of China) (##A)\".\n\n20 The sect started from Monk Yin Yuan (C) of Fu-ch'in (Mili), Hokkien. He was invited by the General of the Tokugawa Bankufu (UK) in 1654, In the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210443, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "31\n\ndeep indentations. There are [more than 230] islands.\n\nOne of them, placed almost in the centre of the Port Shelter area on the eastern side of the Colony and separated by a strait less than fifty yards wide from its neighbour, is Kau Sai island. The sheltered area lying between the two islands westward of the narrows (Kau Sai Strait) is Kau Sai Bay, referred to by the locally based fishermen always as “our own bay” (boon waan). Stretching north along the western shore immediately proximate to Kau Sai Strait is the village of Kau Sai. In 1950 it comprised 17 houses, all but two occupied by 50-plus speakers of the Hakka language, and was regarded as a home anchorage by the almost 500 Cantonese speaking inhabitants of some 61 boats. The two non-Hakka households contained 6 ex-Boat People.\n\nThe largest, most elaborate and best kept building was a temple dedicated to Hung Shing Kung, a deified official of the T'ang dynasty who holds a watching brief over the fortunes of all manners of men, particularly those who have to do with boats and the sea. An unroofed patio on the left side of the main hall of the temple was used as a schoolroom, weather permitting. Unswept and dirty it contained about ten clumsily botched-up desks and a few equally ramshackle chairs. The rest of the temple building was fairly regularly swept and dusted by one of the shore dwelling ex-fishermen, an elderly fellow, no longer capable of work at sea, who had been given the post of caretaker a few years before. The temple had a concrete floor, a gilded inscription over the entrance, and contained a number of images and the usual ritual appointments. Its granite block walls were surmounted by an upward curving roof of blue-green porcelain tiles.\n\nSome of the houses were built or partly built of granite blocks, too, but more were constructed of once-whitewashed mud or mud-bricks. Their floors were all of beaten earth. Near each Hakka house stood a pig-sty, often tumbledown and usually doubling as a latrine for humans. There were two shops. The larger was owned and run by an ex-fisherman, with the help of his wife and daughter; the smaller one, next door, was in the hands of the younger brother of the Hakka village \"headman\".", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210985, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "22\n\nTwo completely different factors come into the picture, namely Gaullism and Italy.\n\nA hidden but deep correspondence had always existed between Gaullists and Maoists. Both emphasised the importance of historical roots and long-term perspectives, for France de toujours as well as for the Sons of the Han on their everlasting Yellow Earth. Both had refused to align their nuclear policies with the strategies of the superpowers. André Malraux's visit to China in the 1960s, both as a former activist in the 1926-27 revolution and as a prominent Gaullist intellectual, was a symbolic episode, much publicised in France. Had General de Gaulle not died suddenly in 1970, he most probably would have paid Mao Zedong the visit already arranged by his old companion Etienne Manach, then French Ambassador to Peking. It would have been an extraordinary performance, in both the grand French and Chinese traditions.\n\nItaly was also very influential. There has always been a special connection between Italy and China. Chinese intellectuals have always felt very much at home in Italy, and the active sympathy for Maoist China of such prominent Italian intellectuals as Malaparte, Alberto Moravia and Maria-Antonietta Macchiocchi certainly made an impact on Parisian literary circles. Altogether, many influential French intellectuals were in those years very keen on visiting China and however brief their visit publicising their sympathy for China. Be they Claude Roy, Etiemble, Roland Barthes, Philippe Sollers, Julia Kristeva18 or many others, their individual approaches may have differed one from another, but they were all indulging in China as if their commitment to China was more important than China itself. They also affected a definitely revivalistic attitude, as if they were the new sinophiles in the grand eighteenth-century tradition.\n\nBy and large, Maoist China was very chic in French cultural life of the 1950s and 1960s. The theatres were packed full at every Peking Opera visit, the books of Han Suyin sold very well, Chinese exhibitions of art at the Grand Palais were a must, the veteran film-director Joris Ivens, Dutch by birth but settled in France, embarked on a 12-hour film on Yu Gong and People's China's achievements, and the well-established literary publishing series", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211969, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 384, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "359\n\nThe offerings included fruits and cha-gwo pastries. In addition to these they burnt paper clothing for Jau and Wong, and a yellow piece of paper with the characters wing-bou-ping-on (\"unremitting protection\") and some yun-bou for the earth god.\n\nB. Setting up the ghost flags\n\nEarly in the morning of the opening day, after the rite of Fetching Water, the ritual representatives on their own installed faan flag posts for the worship of ghosts. There were five of these posts, each set up by the ritual representatives of one gu.\n\nThe ritual representatives took precautions in this rite, since it dealt with ghosts. They told each other the taboos to observe in installing the posts. One should avoid speaking people's names out loud while this was being done. It would be wise to be silent. It was said (by the ritual representatives) that those who posted a faan should be those to dismount it afterwards. Some of the ritual representatives complained about not getting red packets for doing the rite. It was not for the money, they said, but for the good fortune.\n\nThese faan posts were initiated by the priests in the first Procession of Offerings.\n\nC. Inviting the gods\n\nBeside the temple gods and other localized gods of Kam Tin, gods were fetched from the Pat Heung Temple at Sheung Tsuen and the Yuen Kong Temple. These two places were included because the places, I was told by the villagers, originally belonged to Kam Tin. Also fetched was the portrait of the Heavenly Master from his altar inside the village gate of Tai Hong Wai.\n\nGenerally the ritual representatives of each gu were responsible for fetching their own gods: e.g. the gods at the Hung-Sing Temple and Man-Cheung Temple were fetched by the ritual representatives of Shui Tau. There were special arrangements for the gods important to the Kam Tin Dangs as a whole, and gods from outside the heung: (1) Ritual representatives no. 1 to no. 5 went to Ling-Wan Ji, as well as to the temples of Yuen Kong and Sheung Tsuen; (2) All 60 ritual representatives went to fetch the Heavenly Master from Tai Hong Wai; (3) The Head", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212589, "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "the Buddhist hall. After this was finished close mourners changed into everyday, brightly coloured clothes. A meal was held in a restaurant. There were seven courses. About 50 people attended. Meat was served.\n\nThe immediate family members then went home and took a second bath with pomelo and wampee (variant spelling wampi) leaves to purify the water. Lucky packages were opened. Besides money they contained pieces of hibiscus, foo paak (†), a homonym also meaning wealth or riches. Another packet contained, in addition to money, a needle and thread, and a lady's hairpin, described as kat lei ( ). This is interpreted as pierce or sharp, also as lucky or profit. Anything that could bring bad luck, such as black objects, had been burned. Things that were brought home, for good luck, included white mourning shoes and white attire. These were known as tsoi paak (ĦĦ ), for ‘good luck'. The large photograph used at services was later hung in the dead woman's home. Some maintain it should be packed away or it can bring bad luck.\n\nAshes\n\nThe day after the fifth tsat the immediate relatives went to the funeral parlour to collect the ashes. Everyone expressed pleasure that these were 'fairly white'. They are often blackish. There was a short ceremony. Joss sticks and ‘gold bars' were burned, together with a rosette made up with yellow papers with blessings printed on them.\n\nAt Ching Chung Koon (Temple) permission to enter was requested from the two door (earth) gods. Everyone bowed three times. An orange was placed on each shrine. The niche selected two weeks earlier to hold the ashes of the dead woman, together with another alongside for her husband, was not too high so it was accessible. His remains were moved from another niche. The cost for each, in 1988, was $10,800, increased from $600 in 1966. (Business is thriving and extensions are continually being built to the columbarium.) The mother's niche number is '17' which can be interpreted, 'certainly you will get it.' The father's niche is '18', read as 'definitely will prosper'.\n\nThe mourners bowed three times to 'spirit neighbours' of father and mother and burned single incense sticks in all vases in that room. An effort was made not to offend and not sit on ledges in front of other", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212590, "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "124\n\nniches. If this happened, one bowed and apologised aloud to the spirits.\n\nThe ceremony was conducted by a Taoist brother who carefully poured the ashes through a white cloth folded in the neck of a funnel. The deceased's gold bracelet together with a piece of jade were also deposited in the urn. The top was tied on with red ribbon. Her name was written on the outside of the urn with red paint, 'free hand' (without butt of hand resting on anything). The Taoist painted fine characters although he professed to have had little schooling. After mourners bowed three times flowers were arranged in vases. Paper rosettes were burned. Also, two tables were placed in front of the two niches and a feast, including fruit, cakes and rice wine, was laid out. The two urns, each covered in white cloth, were then inserted in their respective niches, the doors were sealed with plaster and more joss sticks and yellow rosettes were burned. The six mourners then lined up, recited Buddhist prayers and received lucky packets. It was necessary for the Chinese candles to burn out before bowing goodbye and leaving the columbarium for a late, 4.00 pm, vegetarian 'lunch'.\n\nSixth Tsat\n\nAlthough official ceremonies ended with the fifth, the family paid a further visit to Ching Chung Koon, where the ashes are kept, on the sixth tsat. Joss sticks in clusters of three (one each for heaven, earth and mankind), paper 'gold bars' and a large rosette made up of coloured paper were burned. These eight-inch squares of yellow paper had been 'blessed' by an old woman. She meticulously burnt a hole in the centre of each single sheet with a joss stick. Also, single joss sticks were placed in all vases for other souls in that room of the temple.\n\nCharity\n\nAt this stage, the three daughters were informed by a fortune teller that, for their mother to enter kik lok shai kaai (extremely happy world) it would help if they performed some charitable deeds. A donation of $2,000 was made to a poor, elderly watchman to help with medical expenses. 'Give to a charitable organisation, with heavy overheads, there is no telling where the money goes,' one daughter said.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213257, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 79, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "Fung shur is not composed entirely of superstitions. Much consists of a complex web of well-documented metaphysical beliefs and esoteric knowledge based on first principles and supported by philosophical theory and practices grounded in ancient, indigenous lore. There is a rich technical vocabulary (Morgan, 1980:209).\n\nAlthough sometimes dismissed by sceptics as old-wives tales, psychic power in various forms and occultism are, of course, not uncommon in the West. They include hypnotic suggestion, thought transference, telepathy, premonition, emotional links, out-of-body experiences, life-after-death, and even the charming of warts.\n\nFung shu doctrine embraces magnetism, cosmic waves, radio activity, the mysteries of heaven and earth, the natural sciences, logic, higher mathematics, chemistry, geology, geography, philosophy, astronomy, psychology, ecology, architecture, spatial orientation, and ergonomics. It has been claimed that what geomancy is to geography, astrology is to astronomy (Cumine, 1981:75). Although fung shui depends upon elements such as design, spatial planning, ecology, and common sense, there is also a degree of mysticism. Sometimes geomancy is debased by gnosis, ancient spiritual sciences and beliefs, folk religion, and traditional mythology. The relationship to nature, and observing nature's principles linked to the universe, is important. Some practitioners claim, 'One does not demand reasons from nature.'\n\nOne fung shui master stated, 'A person is not just born, married, loses his or her job, and dies. There are reasons. For example: in early 1992, the Antiquities Advisory Board was preparing for a group photograph. The author wanted to walk in, and stand in the centre behind a row of chairs, but his path was blocked by a group of fellow members. During those intervening seconds, a heavy electric-light globe capable of maiming or killing came crashing down just where the author would have stood. Some Board members reacted by saying good fortune comes in waves. At that time the author's luck was at a high ebb. Then would have been the time to have bought a sweepstake ticket. Luck attracts luck. Other members said that, because the author had donated blood 70 times, escaping death was a reward for good deeds.'\n\nThere are references to fung shui as early as the third century BC, referring to the construction of the ... (a li is about one third of an ...).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213284, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 106, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "86\n\nIn England between 1697 and 1851, a tax on windows was imposed. Consequently, many were blocked up. For different reasons, Chinese living in villages in the New Territories also consider carefully before cutting a hole through a wall to construct another window or door. These are viewed as 'noses' and 'mouths'. An opening can admit evil influences and bring sickness or death. Their position, size and proportions are important. So is the way they open and swing.\n\nIn the flat in the case study the Chinese amah (maid) was frequently sick. 'Move the gas cooker,' the lady of the house was instructed. 'It is not good for the cooker to face the door.' After this was done, although it could have been coincidence, the amah said her health improved. She had faith that if the cooker was moved she would feel better. Afterwards, she assured the author she did.\n\nWith Chinese culture embracing so many aspects of the universe and influencing daily life, aesthetics have always been considered important. Door gods, for example, sometimes adorn entrances to ward off evil. In turn, colour and lighting affect both mind and wellbeing. If a person prefers dark colours, then, to balance, they should choose patterns that have light backgrounds. Colour and beauty are meant to complement.\n\nColour symbolism has been linked to the Five Elements, the forces of nature (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water), since the fourth century BC. These are not just looked upon as five kinds of fundamental matter but more as five fundamental processes. Fire, for instance, is linked to red. Not only does it look good but it protects the wearer from evil (Baker, 1981:154). For example, the talismanic red spot on the white headdress of a mourner at a funeral service; worn in the nature of an amulet, red (often vermillion) attracts good fortune. It is a yang colour: the colour for weddings and celebrations. It signifies joy, festivities, virtue and sincerity. Yet to have red paint on the end of a bamboo pole, on which the washing is hung high above the street, is not considered appropriate. It could fall and kill. Red symbolises blood.\n\nRegarding the other four primary colours which are linked to the Five Elements. Yellow (emblematic of earth), a natural and loyal colour of old China was sacred to the emperor. It is the colour of the garments of Taoist priests. It signifies longevity and is the colour for burying the dead. Geomantic blessings and charms, to ward off evil influences, are frequently written or painted on yellow paper representing the earth.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213287, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 109, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "89\n\nunease (even dread) if certain lore is followed concerning the construction or the furnishing of a building. A Chinese geomancer will probably be able to give specific reasons why it is so. It is not difficult to imagine that if someone's home is 'tranquil', and that if he or she feels 'comfortable' there, that this will be 'picked up', sensitively, eventually resulting in a greater degree of self-possession and, consequently, greater accomplishment.\n\nIn Chinese communities talismanic paper emblems above door frames, like the 'Five Happinesses' (signifying long life, wealth, health and peace, love and virtue, and natural death after a full span) are common. Understanding something of metaphysics one realises the power of the negative word. The Chinese characters signifying 'Coming or leaving go in peace', painted on a strip of red paper and pasted by the entrance, although by no means hypnotic or yogic techniques, mean a great deal to many. It psychologically 'hearts are put at ease' by constantly reading such messages (a form of auto-suggestion) then the desired effect is achieved.\n\nSome Chinese symbols can be compared with an old shoe tied to the back of the car of a newly married English couple; or a horseshoe (which must hang the right way up) by the door of a cottage. Inside the parlour you might find the motto, 'Bless this house', displayed. Certainly during World War II a number of British aircraft crew members, on bombing missions over Germany, carried lucky charms, such as rabbits' paws.\n\nFung shui has been likened to the pull of gravity or high voltage electricity. Others describe it as dei mat, the veins through which the pulse of the earth can be sensed. The end result, many believe, is directly proportional to the degree of skill of the fung shui practitioner. With the cosmos in a constant state of flux his task is to analyse bad elements and to advise on cures to help balance or restore the build-up and circulation of chi. Often it is accepted the fung shui specialist cannot prevent something from happening. But if he has mastered his art he can make the effects less severe.\n\nOf course it does not always happen so. 'My fung shui lo (\"fellow\") did not tell me so much red in my flat would upset Ng Wong (the Fifth King God),' a Chinese woman told the author. 'Also, he did not forecast the death of my friend's mother. All he is concerned with now is taking on as...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213377, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1994", "page_number": 199, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "186\n\nin matters relating to personal relationships. During Lunar New Year, hundreds of people come from all over the Territory, even from as far away as Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island, to offer prayers at the foot of the tree and to throw red and yellow prayer flags, attached to strings weighted with stones, up into the branches.\n\nOnly in four villages was it claimed that the special trees were the home of earth gods. At Lin Au, the large, old Cinnamomum trees were planted by the villagers when the settlement was founded in order to protect the shrine that was built to honour the ancestors. The earth gods have their home in the trees and also roam about in the wood. Lin Au and Sheung Tsuen were the only cases found where this was said to happen, but it may be that such a belief could have been more widespread in the past. At Pak Kong, a grove of six trees protects the Tai Wong shrine to Tin Hau beside which is a smaller Paak Kung that is used to worship the earth gods who live in the trees. Kuk Po is also an example of an ancestral tree which is also the home of the local earth god.\n\nIn most cases, however, the tree adjacent to the shrine is there simply to provide shelter. In the study carried out by the author, a variety of reasons were given as to why specific trees were protected and the commonest reason given was that the trees protected the important shrines of the village, which were both Tai Wong and Paak Kung shrines. The shrines were situated at important fung shui locations, usually protecting the entrance points of the village from loss of chi (good luck or prosperity) and affording protection from undesirable forces. The spirits live in the shrines rather than in the trees themselves. For example, at Tai Om, camphor trees protect each of the three Paak Kung shrines in the village and trees protect four of the principal shrines in Man Uk Pin. Such trees are commonly banyan, or camphor, although other species may be used. The commonest shrine trees found during the study were;\n\n \n Ficus microcarpa\n Banyan\n 19\n \n \n Cinnamomum camphora\n Camphor\n 13\n \n \n Euphoria longan\n Longan\n 5\n \n \n Gironniera nitida\n \n 5\n \n \n Litchi sinensis\n Lychee\n 4\n \n\nin addition to 26 individuals of other less common species.\n\n19", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214302, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "124\n\nschool in Chefoo in Shantung province before returning to England where he attended the Bath Art and Technical School. There he studied art before switching to Bristol University to read for a BSc in science. He would appear to have given up his higher education following the shattering of his romantic aspirations when he ran away to sea and worked his passage to Canada. He toiled for a while in Canada before returning to his parents in Taiyuan in 1905 with vague plans to hunt and explore the wild and barren areas of north China; he was twenty at the time. In practice he took up a teaching appointment at the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin and only during the vacations was he able to hunt and seek specimens for the natural history museum he was establishing at the college. From the vague evidence available he would appear to have remained at the school for only a matter of a year as he was invited at the end of the final term to join the Duke of Bedford's expedition to collect zoological specimens in Shensi province for the British Museum. Shensi is the neighbouring province to Shansi and lies to its west.\n\nThe Duke of Bedford's expedition travelled through Sowerby's home province of Shansi where they lived for a week or so in one of the typical village cave houses of the Yellow Earth country, in a village some fifty miles west of Taiyuan. From there they continued west, across the Yellow River to Yenan in Shensi and on into the Ordos desert. Their return route took them north to the Great Wall, which they then followed to the east before turning south to Taiyuan down the main route through Shansi. The whole expedition took some five months and Arthur Sowerby would have been just twenty-one. It was during this expedition that Sowerby discovered a new species of jerboa [kangaroo rat] which was sent back to the British Museum and subsequently named after him, Dipus sagitta sowerbyi.\n\nComing from a missionary family he would have had little or no financial support from his father and would have needed to work for a living. He was sponsored for a number of years by a wealthy American, Robert Sterling Clark, who remained a friend for most of Sowerby's life, and although it is no more than supposition he may well have continued teaching at the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin especially in view of his marriage in that city in 1910, at the age of twenty-six. The long vacations would have been an advantage enabling him to gather the material he later used in the China Journal, especially his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214332, "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": 190, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "154\n\nMany of the illustrations tended now to concentrate on showing the human side of the Chinese, and the related narratives discuss their subjects in terms which would have been particularly welcome to the British reader, who would for example have approved the love of animals spoken of in relation to the illustration, \"Peking Cab.\" \"It is astonishing how the Chinese manage their animals by kindness. Refractory mules which could not be persuaded to go into the shafts by threats from Indians are as obedient as dogs at a word from a Chinese carter, a stranger to them. The Pekinites are very fond of horses.\n\n>> 31\n\nThere is further evidence of rapprochement in the fact that there is now a degree of westernisation in the delineation of Chinese features, particularly in \"A Group of Chinese.\"52\n\nAs a whole, the illustrations and related narratives now seek to create a sense of fellow-feeling, and to win a recognition by the British Public that the Chinese people as a whole are fellow-dwellers on Planet Earth. The description of Chinese boys on the ice is a good example of this. \"The Peiho ... is frozen over, and the ponds from Pekin to Taku are solid blocks of ice, on which numerous boys disport themselves much in the same way that small boys do in other parts of the world. There is, however, one dodge I never saw before. A kind of skates, made of Indian corn stalks, are placed, not fixed, under the feet, and the boys, grasping poles, shove themselves along at a glorious pace. Of course, now and then they meet with a fall but up they get again, laughing heartily at their little accidents, and begin life afresh. Nothing can be more glorious than this steady frost, with the cloudless, clear skies, the sun shining all day, the moon all night, making the ice sparkle like diamonds, and producing a most exhilarating effect in the human frame.\"53\n\nComparatively few of the illustrations, now, return to the topics of domination, retribution and punishment. Those there are may be represented by a spirited portrait of Lord Elgin on horseback,54 and by illustrations entitled, \"Weighing the Compensation Money Exacted from the Chinese for the Released British Prisoners and for the Families of those who were Murdered,\" \"Arrival at Tien-Tsin of a portion of the Chinese Indemnity Money, Escorted by Chinese Troops,\"55 and \"French Spoils From China Recently Exhibited at the Palace of the Tuileries.\"57 In keeping with this, the focus here returns briefly to those who had suffered at Chinese hands. The Editor glances at the financial generos-\n\n56", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214462, "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": 320, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "287\n\nWard was buried on his old drill-field near the Temple of Confucius just within the walls of the city of Sungkiang [Songjiang: pinyin], the prefectural capital of the area now dominated by Shanghai, and the city around which much of his military service with the Ever Victorious Army took place. Harry Franck2 visited the site in 1923 and wrote that “the Chinese built a temple of remembrance over his grave, similar to those built by Chinese for their famous men over the centuries, though unlike the majority with their gleaming yellow roof tiles his was a pathetic little gray-walled enclosure, covered with ordinary tiles, in an open space inside the West Gate, littered here and there with graves and unburied coffins. It was not imposing yet it was several times more so than the tomb the adventurer would probably have had in Massachusetts. Though the temple was but a single-room building, it had an altar with the spirit tablet of Ward, and all the other features of a Chinese temple, and now and again Chinese still come to burn incense and bow down before their hero of Taiping days. A conspicuous tablet in red and black tells those who know their Chinese that:\n\nAn illustrious man from beyond the seas, he came 6000 li to accomplish great deeds and acquire immortal fame by shedding his noble blood. Because of him Sungkiang will be a happy land for a thousand autumns”.\n\nFranck tells us that the temple was not badly kept, as things went in China. There were some trees and flowers in season, inside the compound, and the whole place has been recently repaired and repainted. Rice-straw and cabbages were drying on everything but the altar itself, and the woman caretaker had gone to market to \"buy things\" leaving her small son locked inside. The only foreign hint about the place was an unfinished stone recently set up by the \"Frederick Ward Post of the American Legion\" of Shanghai. He added that the most touching feature of the whole memorial was the mound of earth, like a common Chinese grave, behind the temple, but within the enclosure, under which Ward's big mastiff was buried. After his master's death, the story goes, the dog refused to take food and went wandering about looking for him until it died of starvation.\n\nSo, having seen an early photograph of the official temple,3 altar and tablet dedicated to Ward in Sungkiang some dozen or so years previously, I was determined to see for myself whether it still existed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214707, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 122, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "86\n\nstep (Baker; 1981,15).\n\nThe matshed consisted of a light bamboo frame clad with thin metal sheets, which are more fire resistant than the old rattan mats that were used years ago (see Figure 1). A compartment at one end housed four henchmen and their god, called by the villagers Tai Wong Ye, sometimes translated as 'Great Ancient King' (Myers; 1975,19)(see Plate 3). The same god in urban Hong Kong is usually called Daai Si Wong (Baker; 1979,121). Different names for the same god can cause confusion. The matshed faced southeast (feng shui south), in the direction of the Kwan Yin Ancient Temple. The number of Taoist priests taking part in the ceremony inside the matshed, with some arriving late, fluctuated from five to seven. Even priests get caught in traffic jams. There was a small group of musicians in the matshed playing, between them, a trumpet, gongs, cymbals and a small drum. Percussion instruments took pride of place. The matshed also contained dishes of fruit, to be offered up to the gods, and paper offerings. Joss sticks were burned.\n\nThere was a great deal of incantation, much read from a book taken off the altar, and some kneeling. Rice wine was deliberately spilled on the floor in the process of purification and offering it up to the gods. The gods of east (the Green King), south (the Red King), west (the White King), north (the Black King) and centre (the Yellow Emperor) were beseeched, in rising and falling tones, to come down to protect the district in words that were not easy to link together and to understand. The Chinese animal sign of the year is said to represent a direction. There the planet Jupiter is located (Lo; 1992,162). This has important feng shui implications. One should not disturb the earth in this direction. The Taoist priests who perform such ceremonies are often called, in slang, naam moh lo.$\n\nLooking at Figure 2, in the bottom right-hand corner one can see a metal container in which are situated the five bamboo talismans on which, during the ceremony, are written the respective entreaties to the appropriate gods. Also on the crudely framed timber altar (see Figure 2), draped with a red cloth, are bowls of fruit, three cups of tea, three cups of wine and various items used during the ceremony.\" They include a book of chants, a crown worn by the head priest, musical instruments and sticks for the musicians to strike the percussion", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214721, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 136, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "'double happiness', to sprigs of foo paak (hibiscus), a homonym also meaning 'wealth' or 'riches'. By comparison in the West, in rural England, a horseshoe is sometimes displayed at the entrance of a cottage to bring luck.\n\n3\n\nThe Pat Heung Valley covers an area of just over 50 square kilometres.\n\n* The Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation later reimbursed the Hong Kong Government.\n\n5\n\nBecause of the rising and falling naam moh sound of their chanting. Lo means 'fellow'.\n\nf These are normally in threes. One is offered up for heaven, one for earth and one for mankind.\n\n7\n\nThe number of urban Chinese who have never partaken of a basin meal frequently surprises the Author.\n\n*To make them more attractive and presentable for the gods.\n\nThe Author has been informed that tun fu ceremonies do take place outside Hong Kong although he has never observed them or seen anything about them in writing. Although there has been a religious revival in China in recent years, he has never observed any tun fu pots on the Mainland although that does not mean they do not exist. A fellow researcher has told him that they may be seen in Xiamen.\n\n10\n\nBy comparison, at Pat Heung there were five pots with one talisman in each. At the Sha Tin ceremony there was one pot with five talismans and the same at Kam Tin and Tai Wo. At Ma Wan there were two pots with three talismans in each.\n\nThe same applies to feng shui where different schools exist. Again, masters have their own ideas. One who the Author accompanied on assignments in urban Hong Kong believes in placing crystal in homes to absorb impure influences. A similar custom is also found in the West.\n\n12\n\nFor which the Hong Kong Government is said to have paid $40,000.\n\n13\n\nIt was made illegal to let off firecrackers in 1967 (the year of prolonged riots).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214973, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "25\n\n“As you wish, madame.” He gave us a second-class cabin, looked at our son doubtfully. \"Tall for his age, isn't he? Only four and something, did you say?\"\n\nAnd another, equally persuasive fragment:\n\nIn Singapore we were refused a room at the English hotel, and the Chinese ones were very hot and uncomfortable; there was opium-smoking, prostitution and gambling all round us. Marguerite had prickly heat, and our son cried all night long. Our clothes were all too heavy for the damp, hot weather\n\nHaving returned home as a former engineering student from Belgium, Han Suyin's father was then employed by the Belgian company developing a railway network throughout the Chinese interior. There are many fragments in the pages of her books, referring to this period in her and her family's lives. A happy one is given already in Chapter One of The Crippled Tree:\n\nRailways meant a lot to my father, and they were also part of the climate of my growth since my childhood was spent in small or large railway stations. Even now, whenever I hear the siren hoot of an engine, my childhood comes cantering back to me.\n\nInequality between Western high school diplomas granted to the Chinese and to the whites was indisputable, self-evident and absolutely “natural,” and was thus quite impossible to argue against. The Chou family was confronted with this inequality right from their re-settlement to China. In Chapter Nineteen of The Crippled Tree, Han Suyin mentions:\n\nIt was in the yellow plains of Honan; not far from it, the Yellow River had burst its dykes and gone flooding once again, and there were many displaced peasants and also bandits and soldiers, the latter more than the former and more to be feared. The little station was safe, however. There the Big Engineer, whose name was spoken of with indrawn breath and a small pause of respect because he was a Belgian and had a large salary, stayed in a new brick house constructed specially for him on a small hill. Mama and Papa lived in a small Chinese house of earth walls on the other side of the railway, about two miles away", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215075, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "128\n\nChinese lives have long been regulated by two separate calendars, the lunar and the solar. To agrarian peasants the accuracy of the combined calendars is of vital importance having long had a religious as well as a practical function. Chinese geomancers use their skills of prediction melding the religious and practical so that time and what in the west would be regarded as astrology are intermingled. Lunar calendars cannot predict the seasons any more than the solar calendar can predict the full and new moons.\n\nAll Chinese religious festivals follow the lunar calendar which changes from year to year, complicated by whether a particular lunar month has twenty-nine or thirty days. Festivals play a major rôle in people's lives breaking up the monotony of life. There were, and still are, three major annual festivals: San Jie, known colloquially as guo jie literally as 'passing the joint', consisting of guo nian, the festival of seeing the old year out and the new year in; guo duanwu, the Dragon Boat Festival on the Double Fifth; and guo zhongqiu, the Autumn Festival, on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. The great majority of festivals in China have been and still are determined by the waxing and waning of the moon.\n\nUntil 1911 an annual Imperial Lunar or ‘Dynastic' Calendar, known as the Yellow Calendar, the determination of which was a royal prerogative, was precisely calculated following meticulous observations by Chinese astronomers in order that imperial ritual sacrifices could be carried out and confirmation obtained for political action. This legitimised the emperor's power to rule and his claim to the Mandate of Heaven. The one stationary star of the Heavens was the Pole Star around which all other stars seem to circulate. The Pole Star was recognised as the linchpin of the heavens. Chinese emperors were cosmic figures, the equivalent on Earth of the Pole Star, with their every move regulated in conjunction with astrology. The calendar divided the year into twelve months; the new moon fell predictably on the first of each lunar month and the full moon on the fifteenth. A similar popular Calendar, known as the Farmers' Almanac, costing coppers, was and still is widely circulated amongst the masses. This enabled, and still enables, the population, mainly the peasants and petty merchants, to be informed when specific actions or functions can be performed as well as taboos warning them against carrying out daily activities which would be counter to the feng shui, such as on a certain", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215992, "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": 291, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "225\n\nA recently prepared description of the area from local sources can be seen, along with fuller descriptions of this famous mountain and its history, in Bóluóxiàn zhì (The Gazette of Bóluó District) (Bóluó: Guangdong Provincial Cultural History Research Library, 1988), pp. 69-79, 325-329.\n\n16. These are drawn from Legge's notes in \"Journal of a Missionary Tour\" and materials from 19th century gazettes (fangzhi) from the Nanbai district of western Guangdong province.\n\nA description of the refurbishing and building up of the temple complex dedicated to Master Kong in Poklo, initiated in the seventh year of the Kangxi emperor (1668) is rehearsed in Bóluóxiàn zhì, pp. 315-316. In the third year of the Qiánlóng reign (1738) yellow tiles were added to the roof reflecting imperial honour and a decorative sign was added to the main temple, honouring Master Kong as one yǔ Tiān Dì gēn (“a Partner with Heaven and Earth\"), a phrase from the Zhongyong which Legge translated \"[Confucius] may with Heaven and Earth form a ternion\" (Ch. 22, CC1, p. 416). Three other similarly adulatory signs were added in the fourth year of the Jiaqing emperor (1800), during the Dàoguāng reign (1821-1850), and the second year of the Tongzhi reign (1863).\n\n17. See Chinese Classics, Volume 1 (CC1), prolegomena, pp. 112-127. The following footnote (p. 113) provides the necessary details for understanding the layout and furnishing of the \"temples (diàn) of Confucius\". [Transliterations replace characters in the original text, which can be looked up in the attached glossary. Here I use standard Pinyin for the sake of easier identification.]\n\nThe principal hall, called Dàchéng diàn, or 'Hall of the Great and Complete One,' is that in which is his own statue or the tablet of his spirit, having on each side of it, within a screen, the statues, or tablets, of his 'four Assessors.' On the east and west, along the walls of the same apartment, are the two xù, the places of the shí'èr zhé, or 'twelve Wise Ones,' those of his disciples, who, next to the 'Assessors,' are counted worthy of honour. Outside this apartment, and running in a line with the two xù, but along the external wall of the sacred inclosure, are the two wǔ, or side-galleries, which I have sometimes called the ranges of the outer court. In each there are sixty-four tablets of the disciples and other worthies, ... Behind this principal hall is the Chong shèng cídiàn, sacred to Confucius's ancestors, whose tables are in the centre, fronting the south, like that of Confucius....\n\nFrom a rubbing of a stele portraying the arrangement of the sacred tablets in the Beijing temple dedicated to Master Kong, it is seen that the \"four Assessors” are (from left to right when facing the Sage) Mèngzǐ (“Mencius,” c. 372 B.C. - c. 289 B.C.), Zēngzǐ (noted for his filial piety, 505 B.C. - 436 B.C.), Yánhuí (noted for his humane virtue, the Master's favourite student, 521 B.C. - 490 B.C.), and Zǐsī (a grandson of the Sage who edited and/or wrote the Zhongyóng, one of the four books Legge first called it the Doctrine of the Mean, but later gave it the more preferable title, the State of Equilibrium and Harmony (see CC1, p. 383).\n\n18. See Legge's descriptions of these ceremonies and some of their prayers to the Sage in CC1, prolegomena, pp. 91-93.\n\n19. According to the journal record, Legge and Ch'ea had preached in the grounds of the Confucian temple at Lung Ch'un on May 15, 1861.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]