[ { "id": 208353, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 77, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n61\n\nI have chosen to work on data from central China, southern Hubei and northern Hunan, the marshy and hilly areas around the Dongting Lake water system in the middle Yangzi valley. I have chosen so primarily because I have a personal academic interest in that region, and again because it seems to be a kind of heartland of 'rice China'. This study draws on data from local gazetteers, fang zhi, and from the compilations of fang zhi materials contained in the great 18th century ‘encyclopaedia’ Gujin tushu jicheng.\n\n2. Some Frameworks\n\nQingming is the name for one of the twenty-four periods of the Chinese solar calendar, each being fifteen days long. Approximately, it starts on the 5th of April and lasts until about the 20th of the same month. The name means 'Clear Brightness'; this term may correspond to prevalent climatic conditions for this time of the year in some parts of the vast country, but it does not translate well the meteorological facts of the season in the stretch of country surrounding the big Dongting Lake in the central Yangzi valley, which were more on the dull side. According to one chronicle, the period was noted for 'much strong wind and heavy showers'.\n\nThe agricultural activities in this rice producing part of China followed the landmarks set by the twenty-four solar period calendar. Thus the Qingming period marked the beginning of the sowing of rice, and it seems as if this was a widespread traditional pattern in the Dongting basin. Generally rice was sown toward the end of April in special small plots, in the literature often known as seed beds or 'nurseries'. Although this practice may have been normal, there was certainly a great deal of variation, even within this limited region of China. Some chroniclers give us dates in the second moon; She ri and Hua zhao are mentioned in places like Wuling, Gongan, and Chongyang, a period of the lunar calendar which corresponds roughly to March, as the time for the beginning of sowing. The Spring Equinox, or rather the solar period of Chunfen, is also mentioned in a record from Hanyang. It seems reasonable to say that, given a variation of a few weeks in accordance with local circumstances, rice was sown in late March and throughout April. As a period of ritual", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208371, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n79\n\nand a new transplantation followed in the fourth moon. In Baling we find that grave worship was conducted in the first moon, at Qingming, and on the 3rd day of the third moon. I think it possible to correlate this unusual dispersion with the existence of two periods of sowing.\n\nThis short sketch indicates how much more we must know in order to make anthropological sense out of the Chinese calendar system. I leave the argument at this juncture. When we know more about the autumn rituals and the New Year celebrations we may, in this new knowledge, find clues to a better understanding of the distribution of ceremonies over the calendric span of time. Again, when we know more about the local conditions and variations to be found in this limited area of Central China, we may find some co-variation in ritual events, which would be helpful in our attempts at establishing the overall system.\n\nNOTES\n\n*This paper was written when in 1975 I was privileged by All Souls College, Oxford, with a Visiting Fellowship. I remain most thankful to the Warden and Fellows of All Souls. I owe a further debt of gratitude to the two Swedish Research Councils for the Social Sciences, and for the Humanities. Part of the material which concerns this essay was found in the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University, in 1970. I am indebted to that Institute for their hospitality, and also to University of Stockholm and the Nathhorst Foundation for generous support. The argument of this paper was presented at a seminar in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. I am grateful for this occasion. For comments and discussion I remain thankful to Hwang Tsu-yu, Wang Gung-wu, James Watson, Arthur Wolf and the late Maurice Freedman.\n\n1 See, for instance, the papers by Maurice Freedman, ‘A Chinese Phase of Social Anthropology,' British Journal of Sociology 14, 1-19, 1963, and 'Why China', (Presidential Address 1969) Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 1969, 5-13.\n\n2 Gujin Tushu Jicheng. The Complete Collection of Books of All Times, Eds. Chen Menglei & Jiang Tingxi, 1885-1888 reprint of 1726 edition. (Hereafter GJTSJC). References to this work are given according to the system of Lionel Giles, An Alphabetical Index to the Chinese Encyclopaedia. London: British Museum, 1911.\n\n3 Taoyuan Xianzhi. Records of Taoyuan County. Auths. Fang Kun and Pi Zhen. n.d. juan 3:12a.\n\n4 Yiyang Xianzhi. Records of Yiyang County, Auth. Zhao Zhepei 1807-1819. juan 2:66.\n\n5 GJTSJC, VI:1259 lb, 1193 # 3a, 1120 # 4b.\n\n6 GJTSJC VI:1130 # 2a.\n\n7 Baling Xianzhi. Records of Baling County Auth. 1872 juan 11:7b, quoting that is an earlier sub-prefectural gazetteer.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209947, "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-1983", "page_number": 206, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nDOG DIVINATION FROM A DUNHUANG MANUSCRIPT\n\nCAROLE MORGAN\n\nArchaeology has revealed a large number of canine bones in the foundations of numerous Shang (16th to 11th centuries B.C.) and early Zhou (11th to 9th centuries B.C.) buildings. According to Cheng Te-K'un, dog sacrifices were part of the consecration ceremonies of tombs, palaces and private dwellings. In another early ceremony, the ning, a dog was dismembered and its remains buried in each of the four quarters either to placate the directional deities or to stop the four winds'. It is also well known that dog meat has been consumed throughout Chinese history for ritual, nutritional and even medicinal2 purposes.\n\nGiven this background, it is surprising that dogs play a relatively minor role in Chinese divination. Section 8 of the largest Chinese encyclopaedia, the Gujin Tushu Jicheng 古今圖***, which deals with omen lore and supernatural phenomena, devotes far less space to dogs than to birds, reptiles and other domestic animals. Nor does dog divination appear to have survived into the present day. To my knowledge it is never mentioned in the almanac nor have I found modern divination manuals dealing with the subject.\n\nThus, a manuscript from the Dunhuang3 collection* (P.3106) entirely devoted to omens drawn from various aspects of canine behaviour, becomes a valuable source of additional information. Unfortunately, only 27 lines from what must once have been a long treatise have survived. Moreover, the lower half of the middle section of our fragment has been lost. Nonetheless, despite its damaged state the remaining text is sufficiently interesting to warrant further study. P.3106 also appears to be the only manuscript on this subject among the Dunhuang material.\n\n* See plates 9-10.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209949, "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-1983", "page_number": 208, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "186\n\ncollection and thus little hope of understanding some of its more obscure passages.\n\nFrom the dynastic histories we know that State auspices were drawn from almost any creature in the animal kingdom. If any abnormality in size, shape, colour, number, behaviour, etc. was observed in animals, birds or insects, it was reported to the capital for analysis by official soothsayers. Inevitably, their interpretation of unusual phenomena concerned affairs of state; a change of dynasty; the advent of a wise ruler; the possibility of victory or defeat in war or the imminence of natural catastrophes and subsequent famine. But while state oracles are well documented we know almost nothing about popular omen lores. This is why P. 3106 with its emphasis on private affairs deaths in the family, litigation over property and portents about personal prosperity and misfortune is such an interesting subject for study. Moreover, as I shall attempt to show, it may also include some non-Chinese material.\n\nA look at the translation of the treatise on dog divination will confirm that from columns 1 to 18 the text is fairly straightforward. With the notable exception of the beginning of column 9 (Chapter 26), the omens in P. 3106 resemble and in one or two instance are identical with omens quoted in the Gujin Tushu Jicheng, from such sources as the Guangkui** and the works of Jingfang10. The only real difference between P. 3106 and portents quoted in the Gujin Tushu Jicheng, is that in the former omens are combined with cyclical characters while in the latter they are not.\n\nFar more important, however, is the beginning of column 9 which advocates lopping off a dog's head and hanging it over the main entrance, a practice not normally associated with Chinese divination11.\n\nObviously, what we have here is a form of exorcism of unknown origin, but unless other manuscripts of the same kind come to light the source of these practices cannot be determined. One can only accept the fact that many peoples passed through Dunhuang, and left tantalising traces of their customs in the fragile pages of Dunhuang manuscripts.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209956, "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-1983", "page_number": 215, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "193\n\n* Shi Boxuan (Yuan dynasty) is the compiler of two books: the Sishu Kuanku 190 and the Guankui Waipian 7 lumped together as Kuankui in the Gujin Tushu Jicheng. See Bu Liao Jin Yuan Yishu Wenzhi WIGxARK ed. Shangwu, Taipei, 1966, pp. 28, 56.\n\n1차\n\n* Jing Fang (77 to 37 B.C.) was a famous Han philosopher and presumed author of a number of oracular works. Most of these are still listed in the Jingji Zhi, Chapter, part 3, section zi of the Suishu.\n\n\"The Liji refers to the ritual dismembering of a dog in connection with the annual Nuo exorcism. The animal's remains were then buried in front of the main gate of the capital. See S. Couvreur, Le Liji, Imprimerie de la mission catholique, Ho Kien Fu (1913), vol. I, p. 352.\n\n12 The charm, faintly visible near the end of column 22, may represent a model of an \"astronomical\" charm.\n\n\"Peach wood was thought to possess magical properties as early as 544 B.C. (D. Bodde, op.cit. pp. 128 ff.) while the wood of the tong tree was associated with the miraculous birth of the hero Yiying. See M. Granet, Danses et légendes de la Chine antique, Presses universitaires de France, reprint edition 1959, vol. II, p. 428.\n\nB. Laufer \"Bird divination among the Tibetans\", in Toung Pao, vol. XV (1914) p. 4, note 1. \"The Study of Tibetan divination is as wide as it is ungrateful and unpleasant for research”.\n\n* The same omen is found in the Gujin tushu jicheng, vol. 26, j.174, p. 1b, column 7.\n\n\"The prohibition against leaving the house for three years is mentioned three times in the Gujin tushu jicheng. It applies: when a pack of dogs howl in neighbourhood streets; when such a pack howls in city markets and, unless obeyed, portends death for a man who has (accidentally) been spattered with dog urine. Op.cit. pp. 1a,b.\n\n* The contradictory omens in brackets show that other dog divination systems were known at the time.\n\n18 The Gujin tushu jicheng has \"against a palace door\" op.cit. p. 11b, column 11.\n\n** \"Dreadful disasters\" instead of \"of the inhabitants will be harmed” Ibid.\n\n\"The last four characters of this column make no sense. \"Mu is probably an error for the numerator mei.\n\nAN ODE ON HONG KONG COMPOSED BY THE MAYOR OF CANTON IN 1845\n\nP. BRUCE\n\nA charming ode was published on December 13, 1845 by the Friend of China newspaper. It gives a rare Chinese view of the development of the young colony of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212529, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "10\n\n[bid\n\n||\n\n63\n\n&£#* (The\n\nHe You sheng, \"Chen Lan Fu di xue shu ji chi yen yuan\" [learning of Chen Lan Fu and its origins], Gu Gong Wen xian 2.4 (Taipei, 1971), 1-19. He's study on Ruan Yuan can also be found in \"Ruan Yuan di jing xue ji chi zhi xue fang fa\" [Classical scholarship of Ruan Yuan and his education policy], Gu Gong Wen xian 2:1:19-34 (1970).\n\n12 Liang Chi chao, qing dai xue wen gai lun [A discourse on Qing learning], (1921, Taipei Commercial Press reprint, 1975), 22\n\n13 Xiao Yi shan, ging dar tung shi [History of the Qing dynasty], (1935, Taipei Commercial Press reprint, 1976), 11 717.\n\n14 Hu Shi, Dai Dong yuan di zhe xue [The philosophical studies of Dai Zheng], 138.\n\n15 This is the only work of Ruan Yuan's that I have not been able to find. It was never printed because Ruan Yuan was not satisfied with the draft. The manuscript had been kept with Ruan Yuan's papers in his lifetime and subsequently disappeared. There was no indication whether it perished in the fires that destroyed the Ruan residence in Yangzhou in 1843, or that which burned down his studio, Wen xuan lou, in 1935.\n\n16 Ruan Yuan himself, as well as contemporary and modern scholars, complain often of the many errors in this edition. Ruan Yuan gave the excuse of not having had time to proofread the manuscript himself. In fact, he had been receiving admonitions from the Jiaqing Emperor at that time that he was expending too much time and energy on scholarly activities instead of concentrating on the affairs of state. Gungzhong dang (Palace memorials) Jiaqing 017818 (1817/29).\n\n17\n\nThis work was not printed during Ruan Yuan's lifetime, but is in Qing shi kao (Draft history of the Qing dynasty).\n\n18 There are a large number of these biographies of individual scholars, not necessarily all Ruan Yuan, scattered throughout rare book collections in various libraries. Copies of the biographies are also among the Guo Shih Guan (Qing Historiography Office) documents in the National Palace Museum (Taipei).\n\n19 For example, the Provincial Gazetteer of Fujian by Chen Shouchi, the Gazetteer of Yicheng by Liu Wenchi, and a new edition of the Gazetteer of the Prefecture of Yangzhou by Jiao Xun.\n\n20\n\nA contemporary print is in the collection of the Harvard-Yenching Library.\n\n21 Struve, 233\n\n22 Ruan Yuan, Ding Xiang ting bi ji [Informal notes from the Ding Xiang studio] 4:1b-2a.\n\n23 [bid.\n\n24 Ruan Heng, Ying zhou pi tan [Notes from Yingzhou] 1.4b; also Ruan Yuan, Yen jing shi ji [Notes written in the Yen jing studio] 11:8:8a.\n\n24 Zhang Jian, et al, Let tang an zhu di zi ji [The life of Ruan Yuan as recorded by his sons and students] 1:19b.\n\n26 The preface was dated 1804, but the work was not printed until later, in 1807 when the manuscript was finally acceptable to Ruan Yuan.\n\n27 Preface of a work entitled Ji Gu Zhai Chong ding yi chi kuan shi, printed in 1853. A copy can be found in the Fu Ssu-nien Library of the Academia Sinica in Taipei.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215088, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "[23] } { } } \n\nwww. \n\n[31] F FAWH JAITH \n\n[32]未大阪楊仙大除申 \n\n[43] 內申人管仲大將軍 \n\n[44] 14 &£}+ AVG & \n\n19×2 2012 \n\nhawu 1954 2014 \n\nYiwei 1955 2015 \n\nGuisi \n\nXudan \n\n1953 2013 \n\nZhange \n\nYangxian \n\nBingshen 1956 2016 \n\nGuanzhong \n\nDingyou 1957 2017 \n\nTangjie \n\n[51] 戊戌大城武大將軍 \n\nWuxu 1958 2018 \n\nJangwu \n\n[2] 人喊謝人大将軍 \n\nJihai \n\nXietai \n\n1959 2019 \n\n[7] PLAŽE MÁLAYW \n\nGengzi \n\nLumi \n\n1960 2020 \n\n[8] \n\n辛日大城楊仏大將車 \n\nXinchou \n\nYangxin \n\n1961 2021 \n\n[25] 〔由人滅為,大將車 \n\nRenyin 1962 2022 \n\nHe'e \n\n[26] 癸卯入成皮時人將軍 \n\nGuimao 1963 2023 \n\nPishi \n\n[55] 甲大歲李誠大將軍 \n\n[56] 乙巳大歲X大將軍 \n\nJiachen \n\n1964 2024 \n\nLicheng \n\nYısı \n\nXXXSUI \n\n1965 2025 \n\n141 \n\nfrom.com", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215090, "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": 186, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "119| 庚申太歲毛梓大將軍\n\n1979 2039\n\nGengshen 1980 2040\n\nMaozi\n\n[20] ***TENIN\n\nXinyou 1981 2041\n\nShizheng\n\n[35] 壬戌太歲洪充大將軍\n\nRenxu 1982 2042\n\nHongchong\n\n[36] 癸亥太歲虞程大將軍\n\nGuihai 1983 2043\n\nYucheng\n\n143\n\nNote: Taisui is in no way connected with:\n\nTaisui Zhenren 太歲真人:\n\nPostscript\n\nWu Yue Dadi\n\nBrian Fawcett in his article on the Chinese Labour Corps in France [This issue-Ed.] refers to a modern postcard produced in Ypres for the tourist market. This portrays a Chinese labourer of the British World War 1 Chinese Labour Corps posing in the studio of a small town professional photographer. The caption within the picture, written in chalk on a small black-board in semi-literate Chinese characters, identifies him as No. 18693 Song Xiufeng and gives the date as Guomin Dingsi, that is 1917 in the Republican era. As the Republic had only just been founded six years earlier, the standard dating should have been Year Six of the Republic. However, the writer has embodied both the new era, the Republic, with the old Sexagenary characters which would, if he had thought about it, caused complications at the end of the sixty years cycle as the Republic was intended to last much longer than that!\n\n2\n\nTaisui was listed in 17th century Qing dynasty regulations to receive official worship as a second-rank deity.\n\nTaisui literally means The Great Year, the Jupiter Year, the twelve-year sidereal period which the planet takes to travel around the Sun.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215594, "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": 371, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "321\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nA TALE OF SOUR GRAPES: MESSRS. LITTLE AND MESNY AND\n\nTHE FIRST STEAMSHIP THROUGH THE YANGZI GORGES\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nIn 1898 Archibald Little was the first man to take a steam-vessel up through the dangerous Yangzi Gorges amidst great acclaim. This was a red-rag to William Mesny who, in 1905 in his Shanghai periodical Mesny's Chinese Miscellany, furiously wrote that had he been listened to in 1875, a steamboat could have completed the journey up the Gorges within a year or so of that date.\n\nThe 3,200-mile long river, referred to by westerners as the Yangzi is known to the Chinese as Changjiang, Long River, or Da Jiang, the Great River. The foreigner name, Yangzi, is a misnomer from the Chinese reference to the first stretch from the Yellow Sea, approximately a day or so sail up from Shanghai to Yangzhou, hence Yang.\n\nThe River can be divided into four sections. The first stretch from the sea to Wuhan [Hankou and Wuchang], some 600 miles upstream, is navigable for blue water vessels during the summer and small draught steamers at all times of the year. It may come as a surprise to read of the emergency run in September of 1931 of the British aircraft carrier, H.M.S. Hermes to Hankou during major floods. The Chairman of the Nationalist Flood Relief Commission, T.V. Soong, requested the British C-in-C for assistance using RAF reconnaissance aircraft from H.M.S. Hermes to assist the Chinese in flood survey patrol work.\n\nThe second stretch upstream from Wuhan to Yichang is always navigable to small draught vessels and is a very boring run passing, as it does, through a flat plain with many dykes.\n\nThe third stretch from Yichang to Chongqing is fast flowing downstream through the narrow and dangerous succession of Gorges, so popular with foreign tourists. The great variations in water level", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215595, "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": 372, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "322\n\nracing through the Gorges make this section difficult and dangerous both at low and high water. Chongqing, the chief commercial port of western China and an important distribution centre, was opened to foreign trade by an Additional Article [1890] to the Chefoo Agreement of 1876. This stretch also includes the River down to Chongqing from its junction with the Min River at Yibin [Suifu].\n\nThe fourth and final stretch, the Upper Yangzi of 1,600 miles, is torrential almost from its source in Eastern Tibet far to the west, down to Yibin. It has several major tributaries.\n\nWe, however, are interested in the Gorges. They have long been regarded by Chinese junkmen and especially foreigners who had travelled through them as passengers on river junks, as one of the most difficult stretches of river navigation on earth, with a current in places running at 13 knots.\n\nOur story concerns two British expatriates in China who, as far as we know, never met as they were of different social circles. One is Archibald Little, a British Shanghai merchant, married to a British lady and William Mesny, a struggling entrepreneur also in Shanghai but married to a Chinese. Paul King wrote that 'One of the foreign tea-tasters who each year visited Kiukiang [Jiujiang] was Archibald Little, who was never very successful in business but found himself in Yichang in the uphill work of establishing as a fact that the rapids in the upper reaches of the Yangtze could be negotiated by steam craft. In my [King] time the Navy was represented in Yichang by H.M.S. Kinsha - the famous pioneer merchant steamer on the Upper Yangtze owned and operated by the late Archibald Little.'\n\nThe first steamer to ascend the upper waters of the Great River, the Yangzi, through the Gorges above Yichang and as far as Chongqing during the low water season in the month of March 1898 was the 9-ton steam launch, Leechuen [Li Chuan], the property of Mr. Archibald Little who travelled aboard the steamer with his wife.\n\nArchibald John Little was born in London in 1838, and arrived in China in 1859 where he remained, apart from short visits back to Britain, until 1907 when he returned there and died the following year. He was a merchant, traveller and writer and is as well known to some as the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215596, "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": 373, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "323\n\nhusband of Mrs. Archibald Little who was a traveller and writer in her own right and who in 1895 founded the Heavenly Foot Society for the suppression of the cruel practice of binding and spoiling the natural feet of Chinese girls.\n\nThe story now goes back thirteen years. In 1885 Little planned to set up a company to build a couple of steamers after his own design to sail up to Chongqing to open up the vast and fertile province of Sichuan. This led him first to spend six months in one of the ordinary boats of the river learning all he could about the rapids, swirls, currents, depth and other details of the upper waters of the river.\n\nHe went back to London where he soon formed a company, and an experimental steamer of five hundred tons burden was put on the stocks in Glasgow from designs drawn by Mr. J McGregor, the chairman of the company, conforming to the designs furnished by Archibald Little. The steamer was completed during the summer of 1887, and shipped in sections to Shanghai, where she was put together by one of the local ship-builders and launched towards the end of 1887.\n\nShe was christened the Kuling, and was about five hundred tons burden, one hundred and seventy-five feet long and twenty-eight broad. She was eight feet deep, perfectly flat-bottomed and drew only two feet four inches of water empty, a mere trifle over four feet with a full cargo, and was especially adapted for navigating rocky and dangerous rapids. The boilers and engines were amidships. She was driven by two sets of compound engines, with a stroke of five feet, and worked with a pressure of one hundred and sixty pounds of steam. She had two stern wheels and a balanced rudder astern of the wheels.\n\nThe Kuling reached Yichang at the end of February 1889 and all was ready for the passage through the Gorges, when Mr Gregory, the British consul, backed by the Chinese authorities, refused to allow the steamer to proceed, as no permit had been received from either the Zongli Yamen [Chinese Department of Foreign Affairs], or Sir John Walsham, the British Minister at Peking.\n\nThe rest of the story was so characteristic of Chinese procrastination and delay. To put it simply and bluntly, the British Minister refused to coerce the Chinese in any way, and so the Kuling was eventually sold and the scheme abandoned.\n\nThe matter of the Upper Yangzi navigation remained in abeyance until the Chinese defeat by the Japanese in the war of 1895 when the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "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 } ]