[ { "id": 213943, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 13, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "sometimes attended RASHKB functions. He still has interests here—for example the Lord Wilson Heritage Trust.\n\nEarlier in 1997 two of our Past Presidents, Mr David Gilkes and Dr James Hayes, were also made Honorary Members in recognition of many years of devoted service for our Branch. We were pleased to welcome David and his wife Edith back on a brief visit in late 1997.\n\nOur membership today is becoming more cosmopolitan and includes about 20 different nationalities comprising scholars, teachers, lay persons and students. It is made up of specialists, who can pursue their own interests, as well as generalists. We welcome persons of all nationalities and from all walks of life and we encourage interaction between the different groups. There is strength in diversity. Yet in a few ways the Branch has not changed over the past 30 odd years. In the 1965 President's report the following was recorded:\n\n\"the Society should have a publicity officer, somebody who would chase after a few more members.\"\n\nToday, too, we need new members and, with the assistance of Robert Neild, Phillip Bruce and Arthur Hacker, a recruitment drive is under way. But all members can help. If all present members could each recruit a friend our aim would be more than achieved. Publicity is important. It is also up to all of us living and working in the 'New Hong Kong', to ensure that our Branch is seen as a friendly group of similarly minded people who are prepared to welcome all types of members.\n\nAs at 27 March, 1998, the number of local members stood at 393. Of these, 62 were Life Members. In addition there were 110 overseas members of whom 77 were Life Members. It is regretted, however, that, in spite of repeated warnings, members underpaid their subscriptions often because they would not take the trouble to up-date their bankers' orders. This causes considerable extra work. It has been decided that, in future, any member who does not pay his or her full subscription will not be entitled to a free copy of the Journal. Although some complain that our subscriptions are high one has to remember\n\nxii\n\nPage ...\n\n \n\n (No additional text like \"Page\" number information is available other than the \"xii\" which seems to be a page number or a marker) \nwas not provided, hence not added \n\n was removed as per rule 12. The text is now output in HTML using for paragraphs.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214157, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 15, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "together with his wife Edith, re-visited Hong Kong. So did Past President Dr James Hayes who gave an entertaining, illustrated talk to our Branch about his army days, in Hong Kong and Korea, in the early 1950s. We were delighted to see these three old friends once again.\n\nIt is always sad when old friends depart, for whatever reason, and we are sorry to have to report the passing of two of our overseas members in Britain: the Reverend Cyril Clarke and Mr G Harden. We are also sad to record the passing of Lady May Ride who was a strong supporter of our Branch from 1960 right up to her death after she had moved to England. May they all rest in peace. In addition other members resigned and some left, we later discovered, without informing us which complicates the keeping of our records. As a matter of general interest, there appears to be no founding member (who joined in 1960) who is still active in our Branch today.\n\nMembership drive\n\nBecause of reduced membership, strenuous attempts have been made to increase numbers in various ways. For instance a successful photographic exhibition, on the Landmark Building's Overhead Walkway in Central, was mounted at the end of May, 1998 (see Appendix C). The major organisers for this event were Robert Nield and Tim Ko, assisted at planning stage by Philip Bruce and Arthur Hacker. Their efforts were greatly appreciated as was the help of a large number of other members, including Dr Michael Lau who did the Chinese translation.\n\nIn addition to the successful Landmark Exhibition (no pun intended), the RAS message has been spread in various other ways. This has included the President and members giving talks to, or liaising with, approaching 20 associations, such as the Corona Society, Dante Alighieri and the Hong Kong Natural History Society. Reciprocal arrangements with other societies are obviously important and, in some cases, other associations have been very supportive. Councillors have also taken part in radio and television programmes and our Branch is to be allocated space by the British Consulate on the Internet. For all this assistance we are grateful to many different organisations.\n\nWe are also grateful to RAS members Bob and Sally Bunker and\n\nXiv\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214166, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "Appendix C\n\nRASHKB Projects Undertaken during the 1998/9 Year\n\n(a) Photographic Exhibition: From 25 to 27 May, 1998, the RASHKB held a photographic exhibition on the overhead walkway leading from the Landmark building to Swire House. The RASHKB photographs of Western and Sheung Wan aroused considerable interest among the public. The main purpose of the exhibition was to boost RAS membership. Although many RAS members helped mount and man the exhibition, most of the planning and the bulk of the work was undertaken by Robert Nield and Tim Ko. Members Philip Bruce and Arthur Hacker also helped plan the recruitment drive, with the latter designing a new RAS brochure assisted by Dr Michael Lau for the Chinese translation. We are grateful to all who assisted in any way.\n\n(b) Tracing Graves: From July to September our Branch was involved with tracing seven graves for the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia. The requests to trace these graves came from descendants of the deceased living in Britain. Four of the graves were traced in Happy Valley and Carl Smith was able to trace, from his card index system, that the fifth person had died in Ningbo. The bulk of the research in Hong Kong was undertaken by Dr Dan Waters with help from the Government Urban Services Department.\n\n(c) Samuel Cornell Plant (1866-1921): Commencing in September as an ongoing project, two of our overseas members, Captain A.C. Bromfield and Mrs Rosemary Lee, have been assisting the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia research the life of Captain Plant. He was an inspector in the Chinese Maritime Customs on the dangerous upper section of the Yangtze River and he and his wife are buried in Happy Valley. The RASHKB has been involved at the Hong Kong end where research has been undertaken by Dr Dan Waters.\n\n(d) The National Library of China: From 17-24 January, 1999, RASHKB member Dr Kazimiera Gasztine worked in the National Library in Beijing, in an honorary capacity, assisting staff translate passages into English, and writing synopses of the contents of old and rare works. It is understood there is in the region of 4,000 such books in the Beijing library in languages about which the staff at the National Museum...\n\nxxiii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214512, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 370, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "339\n\ncucumber. When we asked why we could not have stayed here as well, we were told that \"it would not be appropriate.\" Draw from that what you will.\n\nInstead we stayed at the adequate Pacific Ocean Hotel. Perhaps a better choice would have been the Yantai Marina Hotel on the eastern end of the sea front. This would have been nearer to the Chefoo School and the other main places of interest to us along the seafront.\n\nWeihaiwei - An Uncertain Possession\n\nThe pace never slackened for a minute. The following morning it was “all aboard” for another anachronistic piece of Britishness. On the way to Weihaiwei, about an hour's ride from Yantai, we received a briefing from Carol Tan on the background to Britain's involvement in this piece of territory that was leased by the British from 1898 to 1930.\n\nOne or two of the party, including myself, had been there before. Indeed, Jessie Stewart had lived there as a child in the 1930s. Gillian Sunderland's family had lived here many years ago, and Rowan Callick's grandfather had been a member of the Weihaiwei Masonic Lodge. But none of us had been to Liu Kung Island, the site of the naval base, and so this part of the journey was to be a bit of a challenge - not least for the \"organiser\".\n\nPort Edward\n\nany\n\nWhat we wanted to see in Weihaiwei fell into two areas: remains of the former Port Edward in the city itself and those on Liu Kung Island. Armed with a vast collection of old photographs from the early days of the British tenancy, thanks to Arthur Hacker, we went off in search of what we could find. The most likely area seemed to be the low hill rising at the north end of the bay around which the present-day city is clustered.\n\nUp above the small naval base, set off from the main road by a small garden, is a small but charming bungalow. Was this the former governor's residence? Some controversy here. The majority view was that the building was not grand enough. Perhaps it was the naval", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214602, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 17, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "Being chairperson of the Activities Committee is a demanding position and we thank Valery Garrett for her considerable effort and for a job well done. We also thank her Committee comprising the Reverend Carl Smith, Doctors Elizabeth Sinn, Michael Lau, Patrick Hase, Joseph Ting, as well as May Holdsworth, Sarah Parnell, Peter Stuckey and Jason Wordie. Others who have helped with the organising of activities include Stephen Selby, Michael Broom and Arthur Hacker. A vote of thanks is accorded to all of them.\n\nProjects and other activities\n\nAgain our Society has been involved in various ways with projects and other activities which sometimes amount to a form of community service. For instance, over the summer we pieced together information for Mrs Victoria Brown of Australia. She was trying to trace details about her great-grandmother, Mrs Miranda Main (née Mann), who served as a school principal in Hong Kong at the end of the 19th and early in the 20th century. When Mrs Brown visited Hong Kong in October of last year, together with Mr S T Chiu of the Antiquities and Monuments Office, he and I showed Mrs Brown the old school building at 136 Nathan Road where her great-grandmother had been principal. Also, RAS members David Clinton and Dr Gillian Bickley met Mrs Brown and provided her with useful information.\n\nWith the help of Council member Tim Ko, we also provided information regarding bullet and shrapnel marks on a wall on Lower Stubbs Road where a great deal of fierce fighting took place when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong in December 1941. In another case a lady in England, Frances Howell, was trying to trace details of her relatives who lived in Shan Dong Province and Hong Kong.\n\nAgain, in response to a letter in the press, information was provided for a relative in England regarding Lieutenant Henry Dallas who died in Hong Kong in 1844. Information was obtained regarding both the grave and a monument on the wall inside Saint John's Cathedral up until World War Two.\n\nAlso, our Branch was invited to send a representative to make its views known to a government working party which was looking into the subject, 'Conservation and the Natural Environment.' This is the\n\nxvi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214903, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 318, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "294\n\nI don't for one moment think they had. The Japanese invasion of Hong Kong was a \"natural extension\" of their campaign in China in the sense that they had already occupied southern China - across the border from Hong Kong - a considerable time before. Also, although there are innumerable examples to show that invasion from the sea can be a costly business if the beaches are in any way defended, in Hong Kong's case they weren't. A number of gun emplacements had been built on Hong Kong Island before the war but these would not have prevented an invasion at Deepwater Bay. And there certainly weren't any Allied troops around. The Japanese knew all this. I rather suspect that they invaded from the New Territories rather than assault Hong Kong Island at the outset because they believed that if and when they overran Hong Kong Island, the Allied forces would cross to Kowloon and thence to the New Territories and continue to wage guerrilla warfare for months, if not years. The Japanese had every reason to think that conquering the New Territories and Kowloon first would result in the Allied forces retreating to Hong Kong Island - which they did - where they could be \"bottled up\" - which they were.\n\nIn the round, however, this discussion is academic. The hard fact of the matter is that Hong Kong was simply not defendable with the forces available in December 1941. A successful defence would have required a force of enormous size and superbly equipped, supported by comprehensive fortifications. The \"protective buffer\" of the New Territories was never any more than an illusion. These arguments, incidentally, were as valid in 1897 as they were in 1941 and to that extent The Back Door was both disingenuous and unhelpful. September 1897 was evidently what the media refer to as a \"slow news\" month!\n\nHong Kong Invaded! A '97 Nightmare is a 'new, integrated and corrected' edition of The Back Door. Incidentally, although The Back Door was written in 1897, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that Gillian is having a gentle swipe at the momentous event in Hong Kong's history that occurred exactly 100 years later.\n\nThe actual story occupies but 56 pages of Gillian's book, including illustrations by Arthur Hacker. These, incidentally, are a disappointment. They are supposed to be illustrating a serious account of a battle fought to the last, with heroism and heavy loss of life on both sides. One would have thought, therefore, that they would have been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215133, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 229, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "186\n\nfive sections. When I visited the higher of the two Obelisks, in 1994, it had what appeared to be a plastic anchor, about seven inches long, wired to the eastern side, about half way up the Obelisk. It seemed to have been added as an afterthought. On my visit in May 2000 the anchor was no longer there. There are no permanent inscriptions or markings on either of the beacons and they are not lighted.\n\nI understand however, from long-time RAS member Arthur Hacker, that at one stage some wag had painted on the upper Obelisk the words.\n\nTO MY\n\nBELOVED DOG\n\nFIDO\n\nRIP\n\nWhen Hacker saw the words, around 1980, they were faint, flaking and hardly legible. The lettering was, however, professionally done (Hacker, 2000).\n\nHistory tells us that, before the British took possession of Hong Kong Island in 1841, passing ships replenished their water supplies not only at Waterfall Bay, near what is now Wah Fu Estate at the western end of Hong Kong Island, but also at Tai Tam (Empson, 1992:19). There must have been a pretty sizeable waterfall fed from the Tai Tam Valley, from which relatively pure water was obtained before the Tai Tam Reservoirs as we know them now were constructed. A tunnel was constructed first, from 1883 to 1888, to bring water into the City of Victoria. From then on, off and on over the years, various reservoirs were constructed. They included the Bye-wash, the Intermediate and the Tai Tam Tuk Reservoirs. The commemorative stone to denote the completion of this complex water supply scheme was laid, adjacent to the main road, by the then Governor Sir Henry May, on 2 February 1918. When considerable amounts of building materials were being shipped through Tai Tam Bay, and then on into Tai Tam Harbour for the construction of these reservoirs, the two Obelisks would no doubt have been useful as markers. The construction of these reservoirs", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215138, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 234, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "191\n\nBard, Solomon (1988). In Search of the Past: A Guide to the Antiquities of Hong Kong, the Urban Council Hong Kong.\n\nEmpson, Hal (1992), Mapping Hong Kong, A Historical Atlas, Hong Kong.\n\nLack, Alan (1994 March 17), retired senior member of staff of Government Marine Department, Hong Kong. Letter to the author.\n\nHacker, Arthur, letter together with sketch to the Author dated 29 October, 2000.\n\nLiu Shuyong (1997), An Outline History of Hong Kong, Foreign Language Press, Beijing.\n\nThe Mariner's Mirror, The Journal of the Society for Nautical Research, England, vol. 81, no. 3, August 1995.\n\nOp. cit. vol. 82, no. 1, February 1996.\n\nMok, Sam (1995 February 25), 'Peaceful sea villages a Tai Tam treat', Hong Kong Standard.\n\nSinclair, Olga (2000, June), e-mail to the author.\n\nTai Tam Bay (1894), chart, surveyed by Lieut. J W Combe RN et al, published by the Admiralty, London.\n\nTrayhurn, Rob (1995, January 16), letter to author from Public Relations Officer, Clyde Submarine Base, Scotland.\n\nWhite Ensign - Red Dragon, The History of the Royal Navy in Hong Kong 1841-1997 (1997) ed. Commodore PJ Melson CBE, Royal Navy.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]