Friends of East Asia lecture on Saturday 20th July at 2:30 pm in London - all are welcome.
Village Scholars and their Book Collections: Yung Sze-chiu, 1874-1944
Details of venue etc. are at the end of these notes.
A great deal of work has been done on the village scholars in the New Territories before 1911. These scholars did not, usually, have any sort of Imperial degree, but were graduates of their village schools. We know that every village had one or two such village scholars, and that they were highly respected. They taught the village schools and provided men who apprenticed themselves as market-town doctors, or local Fung Shui masters. However, relatively little has been published about the details of their scholarship. In Hong Kong we are lucky in that the entire library of a village scholar (Yung Sze-chiu, from the poor and remote Hakka village of Hoi Ha in North Saikung, who was apprenticed as a doctor, and taught the village school of his home village, and who acted as Village Headman for the last 33 years of his life) has been preserved. This library, of 496 texts and some 500 loose papers, is believed to be the only surviving village scholar’s library known to exist from anywhere in China. This wonderful archive allows us to clarify his mental horizons, and to see in some detail how he functioned as a teacher and doctor and Village Headman. The talk will explore what the collection has to tell us about scholarly life in a poor Hakka village at the end of the Qing and in the early Republican period.
Speaker: Dr. Patrick H. Hase is a part-time lecturer at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He is also the past President and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch; Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London; Honorary Advisor to the Museums Service, Leisure and Cultural Services Department, Government of Hong Kong; Honorary Advisor to the People’s Government of Shenzhen (Zhongying Street History Museum) China; Honorary Advisor to the People’s Government, Kaiping Municipality, China; and Chairman of the History Department Advisory Board, Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He is a prominent scholar in his field and the author of The Six-Day War of 1899: Hong Kong in the Age of Imperialism (2008); Custom Land and Livelihood in Rural South China: The Traditional Land Law of Hong Kong’s New Territories, 1750–1950 (2013); and Forgotten Heroes: San On County and its Magistrates in the Late Ming and Early Qing (2017). [Source: https://www.cityu.edu.hk/upress/settlement-life-politics]
Dr. Hase will deliver a talk based on his recent study and his article published in Volume 63 of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Journal.
Please book now with Florence at Florence.lkcan@gmail.com. Guests are welcome to join us.
When you have booked, Florence will send you details of how to pay online. Please email Florence to let her know when you have transferred the money to the account. If you don’t do online banking, please bring cash on the day and give it to Florence.
Date : Saturday 20th July
Venue : The Allen Room, St. Anne’s Church, 55 Dean Street, London W1D 6AF
Time : 2:30 pm
Speaker : Dr. Patrick H. Hase
Title : Village Scholars and their Book Collections: Yung Sze-chiu, 1874-1944
Booking is required: Email to Florence at Florence.lkcan@gmail.com.
Lecture cost: £12 for guests to include refreshments after the talk.