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This is perhaps an appropriate place in which to put my last remembrance of a grand old man. In the mid 1980s, on one of my visits to New York, when he was approaching his 90th year but was yet active in mind and body, we had lunch together in the faculty club at Columbia. We then adjourned to a drawing room, to enable him to look at a draft paper I was preparing for publication, on which I had asked his advice. A watery sun shone through the fading curtains, onto the rather elderly carpet and furnishings in the large and otherwise deserted room. Goodrich looked through the long draft for about twenty minutes without saying a word, then told me that it was on the right lines and worth pursuing. It was good of him to take the trouble at his age, though I have since found that "Fu Hsien-seng", as he was called by his devoted former pupils, had a great reputation as a teacher and friend, 19
Our Printer
Like many editors, I have been fortunate with printers, one of whom deserves a special mention. Lam Yung-fai ("Y.F." to his friends) was our RAS printer from the very first issue of the Journal in 1960. He was works manager of Ye Olde Punterie, Ltd., in Duddell Street, and printed the Journal and all other RAS publications almost up to his retirement in the early 1980s. From first to last, "Y.F." took a keen personal interest in our printing work. In those days, his firm's compositors were all elderly and experienced men. They were very efficient, but I knew that "Y.F." used to help me out by doing preliminary proof-reading, so that when I got to see the galley-proofs the number of errors in them was usually small; far less than when, facing rising charges after his firm was reorganized and re-equipped around 1980 and he went on semi-retirement, we turned to other printers.
"Y.F." was a Hong Kong man, born and bred. Before the Second World War, he had been with the South China Morning Post, and was among those employees who helped bring out the first issues of the newspaper after the Colony was liberated at the end of August 1945. He gave me copies of these historic news-sheets, which are now in the Hong Kong Collection (Special Collections) at the Library of the University of Hong Kong, or the Museum of History, I forget which. One or two rare book items were also handed on for the Special Collections, and I had the satisfaction of looking at one recently, noting the
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132
This is perhaps an appropriate place in which to put my last remembrance of a grand old man. In the mid 1980s, on one of my visits to New York, when he was approaching his 90th year but was yet active in mind and body, we had lunch together in the faculty club at Columbia. We then adjourned to a drawing room, to enable him to look at a draft paper I was preparing for publication, on which I had asked his advice. A watery sun shone through the fading curtains, onto the rather elderly carpet and furnishings in the large and otherwise deserted room. Goodrich looked through the long draft for about twenty minutes without saying a word, then told me that it was on the right lines and worth pursuing. It was good of him to take the trouble at his age, though I have since found that "Fu Hsien-seng", as he was called by his devoted former pupils, had a great reputation as a teacher and friend, 19
Our Printer
Like many editors, I have been fortunate with printers, one of whom deserves a special mention. Lam Yung-fai ("Y.F." to his friends) was our RAS printer from the very first issue of the Journal in 1960. He was works manager of Ye Olde Punterie, Ltd., in Duddell Street, and printed the Journal and all other RAS publications almost up to his retirement in the early 1980s. From first to last, "Y F." took a keen personal interest in our printing work. In those days, his firm's compositors were all elderly and experienced men. They were very efficient, but I knew that "Y.F." used to help me out by doing preliminary proof-reading, so that when I got to see the galley-proofs the number of errors in them was usually small; far less than when, facing rising charges after his firm was reorganized and re-equipped around 1980 and he went on semi-retirement, we turned to other printers.
"Y.F." was a Hong Kong man, born and bred. Before the Second World War, he had been with the South China Morning Post, and was among those employees who helped bring out the first issues of the newspaper after the Colony was liberated at the end of August 1945. He gave me copies of these historic news-sheets, which are now in the Hong Kong Collection (Special Collections) at the Library of the University of Hong Kong, or the Museum of History, I forget which. One or two rare book items were also handed on for the Special Collections, and I had the satisfaction of looking at one recently, noting the
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