[ { "id": 204505, "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-1962", "page_number": 137, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "122\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nQUERIES\n\nPRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE FINDS AT SHEK PIK\n\nAt the beginning of March 1962 a bulldozer employed by Messrs. Dragages on the reservoir site at Shek Pik, south-west Lantau, uncovered coins and pottery on the hillside above the abandoned village of Shek Pik Wai. Unfortunately, the find was not reported by the Company and it was only after a member of the Chief Resident Engineer's staff got to hear of it that steps were taken to recover as much as possible from the workmen.\n\nSome three hundred coins and several small sherds of pottery and porcelain were handed in to the Waterworks Office by the Chief Resident Engineer, Shek Pik and these were sent to the Curator of the City Hall Museum, Mr. J. M. Warner, who passed them to me for a preliminary examination.\n\nOn Sunday, 11th March, members of the Archaeological Team of the University went out to Shek Pik and spent the better part of a day looking round the area which had been cleared by the bulldozers. We managed to recover over a hundred more coins and, which was possibly of greater importance, picked up fragments of porcelain from the site.\n\nThe coins have now been given a preliminary classification in the District Office, Islands. Fortunately, despite their long burial, the characters on most of the coins are still decipherable and it has been possible in all but a few cases to determine to which reign dates they should be assigned. They appear to be copper coins and with the exception of two small groups, have reign titles in the Sung Dynasty (960-1278). Of the sixty reign titles of the eighteen emperors of this dynasty, both Northern and Southern Sung, twenty-nine are represented among the coins which have already been recovered. There is also a group of coins which bear the characters Wang Sung, Shêng Sung, and Ta Sung. These appeared along with coins bearing a reign title, and can also be fixed accurately in time, in these cases 1038-40, 1101 and 1226 respectively. The date of the coins covers the whole length of the Sung period, that is approximately three hundred years from the mid-tenth to the late thirteenth centuries. Besides Sung coins there is a small", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204531, "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-1963", "page_number": 12, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "The keen and active interest in the Society shown by our patron, Sir Robert Black, and members of his family is very gratifying and is warmly appreciated. Despite the exacting calls on their time they have been attending our meetings, and this is a noble example to other busy people in the Colony. We appreciate also the zeal of many other prominent personages including the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Hogan, and the Hon. W. C. Knowles who is a member of the Council and whose business house has provided us with both an Honorary Treasurer, Mr. T. J. Lindsay, and an Honorary Librarian, Mr. John Le Mare. I should like also to refer to the interest in the Society taken by members of H.M. Forces and particularly to the interest taken by Col. Halliday and Col. Mackenzie, both of whom have now left the Colony, but it is greatly hoped that this interest will be sustained by their successors. In this connection it may be interesting to mention the first office-bearers of the Society in 1847:\n\nPresident: Sir John Francis Davis (Governor); Vice-Presidents: Major-General D'Aguilar, Major H. P. Burn, John Stewart, Dr. Kinnis; Council: Lt.-Col. Brereton, Peter Young (Colonial Surgeon), W. T. Mercer (Colonial Treasurer), J. C. Bowring (Son of Sir John Bowring); Secretary: A. Shortrede; Corresponding Secretary: Capt. Clark Kennedy; Chinese and Foreign Secretary: Thomas Wade;* Treasurer: F. Bevan; Curator: C. T. Watkins.\n\nIn conclusion I wish to thank all the officers and members of the Society for their loyal and wholehearted support. I am probably in a better position than anyone to appreciate and also to pay tribute to my colleagues on the present Council, in whom you have a hard working and active body, and each of whom pulls his or her full weight in the furtherance of the objects of the Society.\n\n* Afterwards Sir Thomas Wade, K.C.B., G.C.M.G., British Minister at Peking from 1871 until 1883, and later first Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206331, "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-1971", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "A BRIEF REPORT ON SUNG-TYPE POTTERY FINDS IN HONG KONG\n\nJ. C. Y. WATT*\n\nTHE SITES\n\nOver the past thirty years various pottery finds attributed to the Sung period have been made in many parts of Hong Kong. For the purpose of this paper, two representative sites will be described and the finds discussed. The sites are: the area of Kowloon City near the present Kai Tak Airport, and Nim Shu Wan on the eastern coast of Lantau Island, the largest of the islands of Hong Kong.\n\nKowloon City, formerly called Kuan-fu Chai, was the administrative centre of the salt-pans on the north coast of Kowloon Bay. These salt-pans were one of the chief official centres of production of salt in south China during the Southern Sung period2. The existence of the Kuan-fu salt-pans, which we know from historical records, is confirmed by an inscription written by one of the salt-officers, Yen I-chang, in 1274 and carved on a rock which still stands today. The rock is situated behind a Tien-hou temple in Joss House Bay. Kuan-fu Chai was also one of the stopping places of the fleeing court of the last princes of the Sung dynasty3.\n\nIt is not surprising that a site with so much connection with Sung history should yield archaeological finds of the Sung period. The first group of finds made in this area, which are still partially available for inspection and have a fair claim to be Sung, were unearthed intermittently from a small hill which used to be known as the Sacred Hill. This hill, on which stood the Sung Wang T'ai, the Sung Princes' Rock, was levelled during the Japanese occupation in the Second World War when the airfield was extended. When the hill was demolished a large quantity of pottery was unearthed, which consisted of celadons, green glazed\n\n*Mr. Watt is Assistant Curator, City Museum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong. His note \"A Pair of Pottery Covered Jars found at Shek Pik, Lantau Island\" appeared in Vol. 9 (1969) of this Journal, pp. 161-163. This article is based on a paper presented by the author at the Manila Trade Pottery Seminar held in March, 1968.\n\nPlates 1-10 illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210042, "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-1984", "page_number": 13, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "photographs with accompanying text will follow Hong Kong Going and Gone, published in 1980.\n\nSome Problems\n\nA number of problems have beset us during the year. First, the important matter of where we can hold our talks. After the GIS theatre was closed to all outside groups, we used the American Library premises in United Centre for a time. Well provided, and conveniently located for the subway, bus and taxi services, it was a disappointment to learn that the Library's own activities precluded its further use. We then turned to the Museum of History in Kowloon Park, whose excellent facilities partly outweigh the inconvenience for members accustomed to our long-standing practice of using the Hong Kong side of the harbour. We are very grateful to the Curator and his staff for their assistance.\n\nSecond, we had to decide what to do with our Library after the Hong Kong Arts Centre advised constituent members (of which we are, or were, one) that it would be revising the basis of their participation in the organization. Thereby, it was clear that we would have to withdraw, and so lose the library accommodation. Our library, despite its size and content, has been little used over the years, and in the circumstances the Council authorized an enquiry via the Hong Kong Library Association for an appropriate home. In the event, the most suitable expression of interest came from the Urban Council Library Services. The Chief Librarian has now been authorized by the Urban Council to accept our library on long loan, under certain conditions, which include retaining its identity and making it available for reference and research in what will be Hong Kong's largest public library, the new Kowloon Central Library due to open in July 1985.\n\nThird, we have been faced with a falling membership and a diminished return from sale of publications. The phenomena are directly connected, as I shall show below. Fourth, in the longer term we have to consider very carefully the future of the Society in today's changing Hong Kong. I shall deal with both these considerations in the concluding sections of this address.\n\nxii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210728, "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-1986", "page_number": 79, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "62\n\nD.A. GRIFFITHS AND S.P. LAU\n\nThe site referred to is the area of rising ground to the south of the site occupied by the present Government House and on a site formerly occupied by the Record Office on \"Government Hill\" which had served as a temporary Government House from 1841 to 1842.\n\nOn Oct 7th in 1861 Mr. Th. Donaldson was appointed Curator of the Public Gardens and the gardens were thrown open to the public under certain regulations on August 6th 1864. In October of that year the military band began giving promenade concerts in the gardens at stated intervals. The establishment of the public gardens had obviously done much to instill among the European community a sense of both pride and achievement and this sense of well-being was reflected in the wide-scale level of planting in the colony and confirmed by Eitel (1895) who stated that:\n\n\"The increased attention, given to the cultivation of trees along the public roads and around European dwellings on the hill side, had already done very much to displace the pristine barrenness of the site on which the city was built by patches of shrubbery.\"\n\nIn the copious correspondence between Hongkong and London, the gardens were referred to either as a Botanical Garden (as when the Surveyor General ordered seeds for it from a Mr. Veitch of Chelsea in 1861) or as a Public Garden and was under the auspices of the Surveyor General and a Garden Committee.\n\nIn 1871 Charles Ford was appointed as the first Superintendent of Gardens and in his first letter back to Dr. Hooker of Kew after his arrival, he reported:\n\n\"The Public Gardens are in a very fair order and well stocked with plants as regards quantity, but we require greater variety.\n\n\"Very few of the plants are labelled and I believe, no catalogue of them has been drawn up. We have not any Orchids nor Ferns except those indigenous to the Island. The plants which have been introduced are chief-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211295, "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-1988", "page_number": 11, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "left vacant on a popular visit.\n\nVenues\n\nWith a predominantly Hong Kong Island based membership, some of you have rightly said that it would be more convenient to have our lecture meetings in Hong Kong rather than in Kowloon. We have borne this point in mind, and through Dr. Patrick Hase, and by making joint presentations with the Urban Council, have been able to use the Extension Activities room on the 2nd Floor of the City Hall High Block for 7 of our talks this year. We are grateful to the Chief Librarian, Urban Council Libraries, for use of this amenity with its excellent location and facilities, and courteous and helpful staff, and look forward to continued programmes there. At the same time, we express our thanks and appreciation to the Chief Curator, Hong Kong Museum of History, for the continuing use of his well-equipped lecture hall in Kowloon Park from time to time. Without permanent premises of our own, we are doubly grateful. This closer connection with the Urban Council's Museum and Public Library Service has, I feel, been mutually beneficial.\n\nPublications\n\nThe Journal is our main publication. It has been running behind, and I am glad to report the completion and issue of two numbers during the year, those for 1984 and 1986. The 1987 Journal is with the press. I wish to thank Dr. Patrick Hase and Dr. David Faure for editing them, and Dr. Faure again for his work on the 1987 number.\n\nLooking through these and past issues, one becomes strongly aware of the Journal's permanent contribution to Hong Kong Studies. It's almost as if anyone interested in the subject can't afford to be without a set! And indeed we have sold nearly 30 sets in the past year. With more attention being paid to Hong Kong Studies — especially in China, where I hear there are some 20-30 centres established for this purpose — the value of the material stored in the Journal has become apparent to many. No other academic publication has for so long concentrated on Hong Kong, and our contributors have surely aided its readers towards a better understanding of the place. To give but one example, Hong Kong's commercial development and interaction with China come vividly to life!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 } ]