PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1981
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I am pleased to report, tonight, on your Society's activities over the last year: on our lectures, expeditions, publications and other projects, and on membership. I start with the lecture programme.
Lectures to the Society
Lectures during the year covered topics concerned with Chinese natural science, law, culture and society, and history, most of the material presented being based on original, sometime on-going, research, and the emphasis this time being on Hong Kong itself. We opened, however, with a film and short talk from Mrs. Peggy Craig on the culture and people of Rajasthan. This was in connexion with tours Mrs. Craig was arranging to Rajasthan later in the year. In May, a talk was given by Professor Ho Peng Yoke, who was a physicist at one time working with Joseph Needham on his Science and Civilization in China, and who had recently taken up the Chair in Chinese at the University of Hong Kong. He spoke on science and technology in ancient China.
In June Professor Allyn Rickett spoke on Chinese law and thought. Professor Rickett is in charge of Chinese Studies in the University of Pennsylvania and in the "fifties had the dubious participant-observation experience of being caught up in the penal system of China when, while engaged in research, he was arrested and imprisoned for four years. Miss Barbara Ward, an old friend of the Society, spoke in November on the "real" boat people, the Tanka fisherfolk, whose way of life — literally on their boats as a floating population — is rapidly disappearing as they are becoming housed ashore. Also in November we welcomed Miss Betty Wei Peh T'i, whom many of you will know from her column "Sweet and Sour" in the South China Morning Post. Miss Wei, who had just completed her dissertation on Juan Yuan, Governor-General at Canton (1817-1826), spoke on her researches into his work.
In January Dr. Mary Turnbull, who has lectured to us several times, spoke on Clementi, one-time Governor of Hong Kong, and his relation to the Chinese revolution. Dr. Turnbull is with the History Department of Hong Kong University. In February Dr. John Young of the Extramural Department of Hong Kong University (Hong Kong U was well represented this year) gave us a second lecture. His topic was Sun Yat-sen.
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