Roderick O'Brien, LL.B. (Adelaide), M.A. (Hong Kong), Postgraduate Certificate in Ethics (Griffith), has been a life member of HKBRAS since 1976. He is an Australian lawyer, and currently teaches international law at the Northwest Institute of Politics and Law in Xian, China, where he lives. He travels widely in China.
Jonathan Parkinson, was born in Trinidad in 1939 and educated in England. He started his maritime career in the shipping business in Sarawak between 1960 and 1964, and thereafter was based in the Bahamas, South Africa, Belgium and the U.S.A. He retired to Johannesburg in 1987 where he spends many hours a week happily engaged in aspects of Naval research ([email protected]).
Keith Stevens, B.A., was born in 1926 on Merseyside, Great Britain where he lived until he enlisted in the Royal Navy during World War II. He later transferred into the Indian Army and then in 1948 joined the British Army as a career soldier. He read Chinese at both London and Hong Kong Universities, before going onto a second career with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office serving, altogether, more than 25 years in the Far East. He first became interested in Chinese iconography in 1948 and has been compiling a Who's Who of Chinese deities for more than 30 years. He has visited around 3,500 temples in Mainland China, Taiwan, the Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions, and across South-East Asia, gathering material. His personal collection includes more than 1,000 images (statues) of Chinese deities, 30,000 photographs of temples and their images, and he has documented the legends and folk law surrounding approximately 2,500 gods. In addition he has written prolifically on modern Chinese history. His publications include Chinese Gods: The Unseen World of Spirits and Demons and Chinese Mythological Gods ([email protected]).
Elizabeth Kenworthy Teather, Ph.D. (Lond.), LRSM, FRGS, was previously Senior Lecturer in the School of Human and Environmental Studies, University of New England, Australia. She was Scholar in Residence in the David C Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University (1995-97, 1999-2000 and 2001-02). She now lives in Canberra, Australia, where she is enjoying the delights of the University of the Third Age (courses on the Silk Route in 2003 and Chinese History in 2004). A summary of her research into deathspace
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