RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch RASHKB and author Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 38 one called "The Capture of Chi Pu". This refers to the same General Chi Pu mentioned earlier, whose life was saved by the knight errant Chu Chia. In this popular version, which is in doggerel verse, the story differs from the historical account. The name of Chi Pu's benefactor is given as Chu Chieh instead of Chu Chia. This is probably due to a confusion between the names Chu Chia and Kuo Chieh, the two most famous knights of early Han. Moreover, in this version, Chu is the official sent to arrest Chi Pu, and he is blackmailed into saving the latter's life rather than doing so voluntarily. This tale in doggerel verse has no great literary merits, but is of considerable historical interest as a specimen of popular chivalric literature of the Tang period. During the Sung dynasty, professional story-tellers flourished. According to the Tsui-weng t'an-lu (B680), a miscellaneous collection of stories and verses probably printed at the end of Sung, the story-tellers divided their tales into eight categories: "miracles" (ling-kuai), “female ghosts" (yen-fen), “love romances" (ch'uan-ch'i), “legal cases" (kung-an), “long swords" (p'u-tao), “clubs" (kan-pang), "gods and immortals" (shen-hsien), and “magic” (yao-shu)." Two of these, "long swords” and “clubs”, obviously deal with chivalrous deeds. The difference between the two, judging by the examples given in the Tsui-weng t'an-lu, seems to be that the former refers to battles waged between armies using long weapons, while the latter refers to private fights involving the use of short weapons. The latter is therefore more strictly concerned with knights errant, who usually fought as individuals rather than as leaders of armies. As for chivalric tales involving the supernatural, such as the story of Hung Hsien, they were classified under "magic". Many of the prompt-books used by the story-tellers, known as hua-pen, have come down to us, though usually edited by later hands. Moreover, some of them became integral parts of long prose romances. The most outstanding example of a chivalric romance based on oral tradition is the Shui-hu chuan, of which there are two English versions, one by J. H. Jackson entitled The water margin, the other by Pearl S. Buck entitled All men are brothers. The historical events on which the oral legends and the prose romance were based took place at the end of the Northern Sung period. According to the History of the Sung dynasty, in A.D. 1121 a group of rebels led by Sung Chiang and thirty-five others ravaged several prefectures : : 10 Wang Chung-min and others, Tun-huang pien-wen chi (Peking, 1957), vol. 1, pp. 58-71, 17 Tsui-weng t'an-lu (reprinted Shanghai, 1957), pp. 3-4. This is the most precise contemporary account of the classification of stories. Other accounts are similar but not so clear. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f CHINESE SEALS 51 as Small Seal was proclaimed by the Government in place of the previous existing irregular characters which were known as Big Seal characters 大篆 or ch'ou wen 籀文, It was during the Chin Dynasty that the term sist 鉥 was restricted to mean the Emperor's seal and official or personal seals were known as yin 印. The Chin seals are usually cut in intaglio, with cross or vertical dividing lines and a line at the margin. The size is about 1 inch square and the shape is usually square. The personal seals were more or less of the same style as the later Chou type. The Royal Seal was said to be made of jade with eight Chinese characters cut in relief ****, with dragons carved on it as decoration. Official and personal seals were made of bronze with simple decoration. The Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-221 A.D.) followed the short-lived Chin (221-206 B.C.). This was the golden age of seal making. During the Han Dynasty, a form of calligraphy was specially proclaimed for seal making. This is a cross between the small seal character of the Chin and the later Li 隸 character. It is regular, simple and upright, most suitable for seal making. The different types of Han seals 印 were most numerous, the chief of which were the official seals, personal seals and miscellaneous seals. The engraving may be in intaglio, relief or both in the same seal. Han seals exist to the present day in abundant numbers and their style is studied and copied up to this moment. The decoration on Han seals was more elaborately made in that different ranks of officials possessed seals of different decoration; such as camel, horse, tortoise, tiger, leopard, bear, sheep, rabbit, lizard and etc. Even the colour of the cord signified different ranks. Personal seals might have decorations such as a tortoise or other animals. As for the matrix of the seal, records show that Han seals were made from gold, silver, bronze or jade according to the rank of the official. Royal seals were made from jade. Personal seals might be made from precious stone, precious metal, bronze or gilt bronze. Ivory or horn of rhinoceros were also used. After the Han Dynasty, the art of seal making suffered a great set-back during the Sui (600 A.D.), T'ang (618-907 A.D.), ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q THE TEOCHIU: ETHNICITY IN URBAN HONG KONG 33 between Hong Kong and Thailand was at its height during two periods of several years following the two World Wars. Teochiu import/export firms trading with Thailand established a commercial association in 1946 (Hung, 1961:4). In the 1920s there were at least 21 Teochiu firms involved in trade with Singapore, and in 1930 these firms established a commercial association which by 1951 had 41 member firms (Hung, 1961:2). Teochiu trade between Hong Kong and Vietnam began in the last years of the Ch'ing Dynasty and became substantial in 1914, apparently as a result of World War I. This trading gradually increased until the involvement of the U.S. in the war of liberation at which time the importation of goods into Vietnam from China ceased. This drastically curtailed the importing activities of Teochiu firms in Hong Kong exporting Chinese commodities to Vietnam (Hung, 1961:7). After the opening of Swatow as a treaty port in 1858, Teochiu firms in Hong Kong became active in importing Teochiu products from there and then re-exporting them to Southeast Asia, primarily for Teochiu consumption. In 1946 there were at least 20 firms involved in such trading and by 1948 about 100. Many of these were evidently forced out of business or into other areas of business after 1949, although there were still about 20 firms still involved in Swatow/Southeast Asian trading during the 1950s. These firms were evidently forced to operate with a very low profit margin (Hung, 1961:8). Immediately prior to World War II there were perhaps 20,000 Teochiu in Hong Kong, many living in Western District. During the 1930s, however, some Teochiu began to move over to the Tsim Sha Tsui district of Kowloon, particularly Haiphong, Hankow and Canton Roads (Lee, 1969:55). Many of these people were employed as coolies in the Kowloon Godown, which still today employs predominantly Teochiu laborers. Most, however, were forced to move out of the area after World War II with the commercial and tourist development of Tsim Sha Tsui. Another area of Teochiu concentration prior to World War II was in the hills around Kowloon Walled City where Teochiu squatters raised pigs and poultry (Lee, 1969:56). This early concentration was undoubtedly a factor in the later heavy concentration of Teochiu in Kowloon City in the 1950s and 1960s. By 1961, according to the government census, there were 257,319 Teochiu in Hong Kong and by 1971 the figure ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 216 A Republican Book of Receipts in United College Library The Hong Kong Collection in United College, Chinese University of Hong Kong, acquired this book of receipts several years ago from a local second-hand book-seller. The volume bears no title. As the Chinese characters in the upper margin (tan-chi chan-ts'un pu*) indicate, a collection of receipts are glued onto its pages. The receipts are dated the 9th year of the Republic, that is, 1920. The receipts are of two sorts. A substantial number are receipts for payment for telegrams sent from Hong Kong, chiefly to Shanghai and Macau, but occasionally also to Amoy, Chicago, Havana, San Francisco, Vancouver, Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh. The more interesting ones are acknowledgements of sums ranging from several hundred to 40,000 Hong Kong dollars paid by Sun Fo (Sun Yat-sen's son). Chu Chih-hsin**, Ku Hsiang-ch'in and others (on their relationship to Sun Yat-sen in 1920, see below). It will take someone with a better knowledge of the political history of the Republican era than this writer to identify all the recipients of these payments. Quite a few, however, are undoubtedly military commanders or warlords: Li Fu-lin acknowledged receipt of 10,000 Hong Kong dollars; 20,000 was paid to commander Hsü at the military headquarters in Swatow, in addition to 9,700 acknowledged on a sheet bearing the heading, "Office for Raising Military Funds in Swatow and Mei hsien, Kwangtung". A receipt for 30,000 dollars was made out to Sun Fo by the Kwangtung Provincial Treasury, and another one for 5,000 made out to him states explicitly that this sum was derived from donations by overseas Chinese. The fleet at Fu-men (") received two payments, of 600 and 1,000 Hong Kong dollars respectively. Some receipts were also made out for purchases (several field telephones, 1,000 items of clothing; 2,000 water flasks). Most of these purchases were not substantial, the exception being a deposit for 40,000 dollars for an unspecified machine. Documents pasted on the first page consist of enquiries made about rice-mill- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 223 or the artisan. And even The Water Margin 水滸傳, an omnibus of tales about a large band of outlaws, tells us next to nothing about the life of ordinary men and women. drama, poetry and documentary writings. So it was, also, with Early travellers, missionaries, traders and diplomats from other cultures were not tied in the same way to one social class in China. They do show in many cases a marked preference for chronicling the deeds and circumstances of the elite, but in their writings they roam over all aspects of Chinese life because they could take no knowledge on the part of their readers for granted. By the time that Chinese scholars and Western sociologists came to be interested in popular culture and the workings of everyday life. China was in the throes of modernisation and encroaching foreign influences, and the old accounts of China as seen through the observant and frequently bigoted eyes of early Western writers came into their own again. Here lay a mass of material on what life was like before the -isms and schisms of the twentieth century began to warp it in strange ways. now. What has been happening in recent years has been a dovetailing of the study of old China with the study of China We can very well use scientific analysis to show how contemporary people behave, but we cannot necessarily use it to discover why they hold a particular set of beliefs and prejudices. Here the study of Chinese history and traditional culture can help us to achieve an understanding. On the other hand we have no good information on how the common people of imperial China behaved, but we can track back from what we know of how contemporary people behave to gain a greater understanding of what those earlier times must have been like. One China did not cease in 1911 or 1949 and another different China take its place: there is a meaningful continuity over time. Here lies the justification for the Ancestral Images approach, and I do not find it surprising that at the time of writing this a Chinese translation of the books is about to go to press why shouldn't the Chinese want to explore the cultural links with their past, even if through the dim eyes of a foreign observer? How good, then is this list of books I have quoted from? Is it a representative sample of what is available? Are all the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 11. Fish harvest in progress. The kei wai is almost completely drained, and water is restricted to a pool in the vicinity of the gateway. The fisherman is arranging his net in preparation to throwing it. There is a small oyster-bed in the background. 12. This scene is to the right of Plate 10. A channel runs along the margin of the kei wai and into the pool. A net has been erected across the channel to prevent produce from escaping. 205 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 110 buildings, traffic congestion and increased costs, erecting stagings became impracticable. With the advent of death the 'blue lantern' used to be hung outside the house. This corresponded to the matt black 'mourning boards' that were fixed outside a home in Britain. The latter went out of fashion in the early part of this century. The three important events in a Chinese life are birth, marriage and burial. If a person is not 'buried well' he may suffer in the next world. A great deal of money can be expended on a funeral and giving a parent a good 'send off' epitomises filial piety. Relatives are unlikely to haggle over cost. Although the undertaking profession has few bad debts, and is said to enjoy a profit margin of from 30 to 45 per cent, it is not seen as a salubrious occupation: 'Such men are bad luck and their touch is very filthy.' Misfortunes of the deceased can be transmitted to the toucher. In slang, a corpse is known as 'salt fish' (MA). The Day Before the Funeral In sub-tropical Hong Kong there used to be a 48-hour limit for storing corpses. With refrigeration and 70 to 80 per cent of bodies being embalmed, which includes injections, this is no longer so. A cadaver can be kept for two months. The ceremony in this study took place seven days after death and close relatives arrived at the 'Hong Kong Hotel' (slang for funeral parlour where a funeral is known as the 'complete menu') the day before, at three o'clock. A multi-storey funeral home contains many halls to cater to both Christian and (like this one) non-Christian funerals. Two large 'blue lanterns' hung outside the hall. These are in fact white, with the family name in large, purple (at a Roman Court this was the royal or imperial colour) characters and the deceased's age in smaller red characters. On that day and the day of the funeral close relatives were 'not allowed to kill'; namely to eat meat, fish or eggs. Also, sexual intercourse should not take place during the mourning period. In addition to the deceased's 16 by 20 inch photograph, incense was burning on the altar. Western candles (candles are normally burnt in pairs) symbolised Christianity and Chinese candles Buddhism, another example of hedging. Also on the altar were tasty snacks that the dead person ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 249 INSCRIPTION NUMBER 2 THE INSCRIPTION OF MARTIM AFONSO DE MELO ON HIS SEPULCHRAL URN ACCORDING TO MY READING Aq jaz ; martım ; a° . Jorge de melo : e.. 4 coutinha es.. na hary.... Па OBSERVATIONS AND CRITERION Inscription Number 2 is written in Gothic letters in four lines in the original. The right side of each line is broken away (It appears to me by chiselling.) I cannot determine the right margin. It is roughly determined by Piedade e Vasconcelos' reading in Inscription Number 1. In the original, what remains of each line makes it a little longer than that which follows it. Thus, line one is a little longer than line two, line two than line three, line three than line four. I do not open up the abbreviations. The meaning can be seen in Inscription Number 1. A doubt in reading is noted in Italic. In line four, the upper part of several letters, not read by me, still remain. NOTES I knew of its existence from Ignacio da Piedade e Vasconcelos, Historia de Santarém Edificada. Parte II, Lisbon, 1740, p. 202. He describes it as "hum caraò de pedra" found in the chapel of Santa Ana of the church of the convent of São Francisco of Santarém. Later, I discovered that the convent of São Francisco was formally opened to the public on March 28th, 1992 (see, to this respect, the Santarém newspapers O Ribatejo N° 335 [2 de Abril de 1992], p. 17 and Correio do Ribatejo. N° 5,266 [3 de Abril de 1992], pp. 1 and 28) and from this day ahead, at certain hours, Tuesdays to Sundays, less holidays, anyone can visit it. Published by Ignacio da Piedade e Vasconcelos, op. cit. p. 202 when the inscription was complete. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 58 claiming that the Society used to worship ‘openly' in Hainanese temples before convening a meeting. One hundred and eight is also a Buddhist number, the number of the beads in a rosary, the number of passions and delusions, and the number of tolls of the monastery bell at dawn and dusk. A further connotation of the number 108 is reflected in the number of times temple keepers claimed that the Brothers were the 108 heroes at Liang Shan Po in the classic novel, Shuihu Chuan, 'The Water Margin,' but when pressed, in every case they admitted that this had been no more than a guess. The Brothers are also known as: Yibai You Ba Gong 一百有八公 Yibai You Xiongdi 一百有八兄弟 and Yibai Lingba Xiongdi Zhonghun 一百零八兄弟忠魂 Lu Bode and Ma Yuan are two generals revered in Hainanese temples, often on the same altar, with both bearing the same honorific, the Wave Conquering General, [Fupo Jiangjun13]. The first general, Lu Bode, subjugated large areas of what today is Guangdong province during the Earlier Han [ca. 120 BC]. A native of Pingzhou, he served with distinction under He Chubing who became the president of the Board of War. In BC 120 he subjugated large portions of what is today Guangdong and Guangxi, and received further honours. The second general, Ma Yuan [14BC - AD 49], was also awarded the title of the Wave Conqueror for the pacification of the southern region some hundred years later. Popular in Guangdong province he used also to be particularly honoured in Guangxi where he was revered as a river god, "The Wave Conquering General - Fupo Jiangjun' and in Hengzhou in Hunan he used to be the main deity in a small temple where he was worshipped as the protective deity at the local river rapids. Ma Yuan, also known as the Vanguard General, Xianfeng14 led a further southern expansion of the Han empire and has been popularly worshipped from about the fifth century AD by Han settlers ================================================================================