[
    {
        "id": 212172,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 114,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "91\n\nswallow are quite unalike, as also are the utensils with which they eat. The Chinese like to play mah-jong or poker for high stakes; the foreigners cannot afford it. The wealthy Chinese gentleman as often as not transacts his business in the public bath house; the Club is a foreign institution. As the foreigner everywhere is so outnumbered, to avoid being swamped he has kept his clubs to himself. The Chinese resent this. And, of course, there is the almost insuperable language difficulty; fluency in Chinese requires years of study, years which few foreigners can spare.\n\nIn Nanking these difficulties could be overcome: on the foreign side the community included many officials who had spent a lifetime in China and could speak the language; and on the Chinese side there were many who had studied abroad and got used to foreign ways. Consequently, whereas elsewhere in China entertainment between Chinese and foreigners was generally confined to feasting in Chinese restaurants, here it took place quite often in the intimacy of the home. The advantage to international association was priceless.\n\nThe members of a large German military mission lived in Nanking, helping to train and equip the Chinese armies. Their departure from Europe had pre-dated the extreme Nazi phase, and they were not averse to mixing with the other foreigners. General von Falkenhausen, who commanded the mission, was later to be appointed by Hitler as Governor of occupied Holland. The mission did much to improve the quality of the Chinese troops, though it was often thwarted by the sort of obstruction to which one grows so accustomed in China.\n\nThe German mission, which under Japanese pressure was ordered out of China by Hitler in the autumn of 1938, left an excellent impression. Some officers of the mission were with the Chinese troops who fought against the Japanese at Shanghai, and the later Chinese success at Taierchwang is generally attributed to German advice. To this day the Chinese officers who were associated with the mission or who were taught in its schools, remain Germanophile.\n\nOn the advice of the Germans large areas of the extensive fortified zone round Nanking were placed out of bounds. The restriction, alas, interfered with shooting. On several occasions, when I went out with my dogs, I was politely stopped by a perspiring patrol who, having spotted me from a distant hill or heard my shots, had chased after me",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212204,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 146,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "cannibalisation. Until the Japanese advance, in the autumn of 1944, flowed over Hengyang you could see a harlequinade of locomotives there in various states of disintegration. Without these reserves, saved through the foresight of the railway personnel, the Chinese would have found it impossible to maintain the service between Kukong, Hengyang, Kweilin and the west as long as they did.\n\nThere was much activity in the airfields, the civil field over at Wuchang, and the military field near the Race Club behind Hankow. From the latter the Russians were operating light bombers, which would pass over in twos and threes on missions beyond Kiu Kiang; and Russian fighters laid in wait for Japanese raids. As I was riding down the Bund one day in a rickshaw - petrol was scarce and under control - a single Russian bomber flying overhead, for no apparent reason, blew up.\n\nThe foreign married women and children had long since left Hankow. The two faded cabaret dancing-halls prospered even more than usual. Artistes, who spoke Russian with a Harbin accent, so I am told, made lots of hay; but, as will happen when news and women both are short, it was chiefly at the clubs that the men foregathered. It was the fashion to go out to the Race Club of an evening. There on the lawn after sunset you would see the British, the Americans, and the French. Hitler had recently recalled the officers of von Falkenhausen's mission, so that the usual sprinkling of German officers was missing, but occasionally Russian air-force officers came to sit huddled in a group by themselves.\n\nI was able to book a berth on a ship of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company leaving for Kiu Kiang. It is an overnight journey. I do not propose to enlarge on the minor discomforts of travel in China. In the railway carriages, in the ships, and even in the cinemas, the bedbugs and fleas take a long rest during the winter from November to February. It was only June and so I was up on deck soon after dawn to watch the familiar banks go by. As we moved alongside the same old hulk I observed the Kiu Kiang Bund. It had grown shabbier. The process of degeneration, which appears to follow on the withdrawal of the foreigner, was evident. Flaking paint, dirty window panes, broken plaster, left their mark. The Chinese are not good at maintenance, whether it be of houses or machines.\n\nApart from Shanghai, Hankow, and Tientsin, where there were large\n\nIII",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    }
]