## PRESIDENT'S REPORT: 1984-85
Tonight I have pleasure in reporting on the Society's activities during the year. I shall also describe, inevitably at some length, some of the problems which have engaged the Council's attention during the year in the belief that you will wish to know of these and perhaps offer some sound advice.
### Lectures and Tours
We have had a fairly productive year. Our programme included twelve lectures and three local tours which as usual covered a wide range of topics relating to our area, and were delivered by specialists based in Hong Kong and visiting from overseas.
Our programme opened on 6 April when a visiting scholar, Dr. Ramon Myers, gave an interesting and stimulating talk, "The Dysfunctions of Chinese Rural Society”, a review from the 1930s onwards. Dr. Myers, who is Scholar-Curator of the East Asian Collection and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, California, is particularly known for his publications on the economy, society, and politics of both pre-Communist and Communist China. His views were of considerable interest, and it is hoped a summary will appear in the next Journal.
On 16th April, Professor John Aitchison, Head of the Department of Statistics, University of Hong Kong, since 1976, spoke about Anderson Gray McKendrick of the Indian Medical Service, a pioneer in mathematical epidemiology, in a talk entitled “A Not-so Plain Tale from the Raj”. On 24 May 1984, a second visitor from overseas, Mr. Wilhelm Kuhlmann, gave an illustrated talk, "Chinese Loan Bonds", those attractive and historically interesting commercial documents connected with the modernization of China in the late Ch'ing and early Republican periods, and especially the development of railways. A few days earlier, on 22 May, three local historians, Dr. Patrick Hase, Dr. David Faure, and myself gave a joint presentation on the Hong Kong History Project. Until recently, few people did much research on the Chinese side of Hong Kong history, in its wider setting. However, the position has now changed, and a great deal of collecting has been
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