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was intended to build up a library collection of books on Asia. It has been an abiding personal interest, for I have at all times been instrumental in adding to it. Although modest in size, it contains a good stock of works on Asian subjects in Western languages, with a major emphasis on China. Over the years, our books have been housed in various places: in the British Council; in the Hong Kong Arts Centre in Wanchai after its completion in 1972; and for almost a decade from 1985, in the new Kowloon Central Library. They are now back again on Hong Kong Island, in the City Hall Main Library.
Placing the collection in Kowloon turned out to be a big mistake. In the past, expatriates who lived on Hong Kong Island talked and thought of Kowloon almost as though it was on another planet.* One might have hoped that two harbour tunnels, cross-harbour buses and the Mass Transit Railway would have altered old perceptions and prejudices. However, during the ten years the Library collection was kept in Kowloon, few of our members found the way there, or made much use of the book retrieval service provided for them at the City Hall Library. As it turned out, after computerization of our membership records in the mid-1980s, most of our members did live on Hong Kong Island, and the old views of Kowloon had apparently persisted. Still being added to yearly, the Collection is now housed on the 9th floor of the re-modelled City Hall High Block and is under the care of the Urban Council Library staff there.
Honorary Editor
I was Honorary Editor of the RAS Journal between 1966 and 1980, responsible for producing fourteen annual issues for the years 1967-1980 inclusive, as well as a number of the Society's Symposia Brochures—the published papers of those presented at symposia devoted to special subjects. I much enjoyed editorial work, and benefited from the many friendships it brought with it. One among them was with the late Professor Luther Carrington Goodrich of Columbia University, whom I first came to know in 1967, after asking him for a note on Ming cannon found in Hong Kong and sending on details of newly discovered pieces. He forwarded other contributions to the Journal thereafter; and once, when lagging in my editorial work, he had sent a "chaser", urging me to put a bomb under our printer. Of course, I had to reply that the bomb needed to be placed under me, as the guilty party.