This is one of the fullest descriptions of the fighting in Hong Kong and subsequent imprisonment, but in addition it is exceptional in being the view of a mature professional soldier, one who had signed on in 1919 and in his long service had seen much including time on the North West Frontier in India. It is also unique for Hong Kong in being a record from the Royal Artillery.

Rewriting Early Chinese Texts examines the problems of reconstituting and editing ancient manuscripts that will revise—indeed “rewrite”—Chinese history. It is now generally recognized that the extensive archaeological discoveries made in China over the last three decades necessitate such a rewriting and will keep an army of scholars busy for years to come. However, this is by no means the first time China’s historical record has needed rewriting. In this book, author Edward L. Shaughnessy explores the issues involved in editing manuscripts, rewriting them, both today and in the past. The book begins with a discussion of the difficulties encountered by modern archaeologists and paleographers working with manuscripts discovered in ancient tombs. The challenges are considerable: these texts are usually written in archaic script on bamboo strips and are typically fragmentary and in disarray. It is not surprising that their new editions often meet with criticism from other scholars. Shaughnessy then moves back in time to consider efforts to reconstitute similar bamboo-strip manuscripts found in the late third century in a tomb in Jixian, Henan. He shows that editors at the time encountered many of the same difficulties faced by modern archaeologists and paleographers, and that the first editions produced by a court-appointed team of editors quickly prompted criticism from other scholars of the time. Shaughnessy concludes with a detailed study of the editing of one of these texts, the Bamboo Annals (Zhushu jinian), arguably the most important manuscript ever discovered in China. Showing how at least two different, competing editions of this text were produced by different editors, and how the differences between them led later scholars to regard the original edition—the only one still extant—as a forgery, Shaughnessy argues for this text’s place in the rewriting of early Chinese history.

"This book is a welcome and timely analysis of the shape tourism has taken on in China... the book comprehensively illuminates the state's various roles on a local level, and the provided comparison with tourism in different nation-states is a useful contribution to comparative studies of the development of nation-states." - China Quarterly

Colonial administrator, writer, explorer, Buddhist, and friend to China’s last emperor, Sir Reginald Johnston (1874-1938) was a distinguished sinologist with a tangled love life that he kept secret even from his closest friends. Born and educated in Edinburgh, he began his career in the colony of Hong Kong and eventually became Commissioner of the remote British leased territory of Weihaiwei in northern China. He travelled widely and, during a break from colonial service, served as tutor and advisor to Puyi, the deposed emperor. As the only foreigner allowed to work in the Forbidden City, he wrote the classic account of the last days of the Qing Dynasty – Twilight in the Forbidden City. Granted unique access to Johnston’s extensive personal papers, once thought to be lost, Shiona Airlie tells the life of a complex and sensitive character whose career made a deep impression on 20th-century China.

"The Shek Kip Mei Myth" provides a new explanation for the beginnings of Hong Kong's massive public housing program, tracing it to the colonial govenrment's inability to resolve the squatter problem due to constraints posed by the geopolitics of the early Cold War.

During China's last dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911), the empire's remote, bleak, and politically insignificant Southwest rose to become a strategically vital area. This study of the imperial government's handling of the southwestern frontier illuminates issues of considerable importance in Chinese history and foreign relations: Sichuan's rise as a key strategic area in relation to the complicated struggle between the Zunghar Mongols and China over Tibet, Sichuan's neighbor to the west, and consequent developments in governance and taxation of the area.

This triggered resistance by the some of the population of the New Territories. There ensued six days of fighting with heavy Chinese casualties.

This book deals with a wide range of issues on the history of the book in late imperial China (1000 to 1800), mainly concerned with literati publications and readers in the lower Yangzi delta.

This is a collection of administrative dispatches from the 1910s through the early 1960s which illuminate not only rural life in Hong Kong but also Hong Kong government policies during the post-World War II period. The authors of the reports include such notable figures as Eric Hamilton, Walter Schofield, S. H. Peplow, Paul Tsui, Austin Coates, and James Hayes. The volume is another important addition to the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Studies series, which has played a vital role in reviving and sustaining local history.

This book on the Spanish presence in Taiwan (1626-1642) shows the Spanish efforts to counterbalance the Dutch encroaching in China waters, and the aim to facilitate to the missionaries their way to China. Besides, Professor Borao constructs a new historical realm in which we can observe the transition from the Renaissance originated adventures to their pragmatic Baroque endings.