[ { "id": 205377, "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-1967", "page_number": 139, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "132\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\nTo the left of the temple of Confucius, is the temple of “Kwan-kung”關公—the God of War; and on the right another one dedicated to \"Man-tai\", the God of Literature. Behind the latter is the hall Ning-lun, in which the public examinations are held. The literati and elders meet here on special occasions. In the vicinity of these edifices is the temple of “Sha-nung”神農—the God of Agriculture; and before it extends a piece of ground, on which the chief magistrate has to plough a few furrows at the beginning of spring, in accordance with an ancient custom. Near the sea-shore is a large space of ground, which serves for drilling the military, and on which the military examinations are also held. On it also a hall is erected for the accommodation of the officers.\n\nNot far from this place is a Buddhist temple, which contains images of the three Buddhas, and of the eighteen Lo-hou, which are Buddhist demi-gods. In front of the three Buddhas is a tablet, before which the devotees worship the reigning dynasty. On this tablet is the inscription \"Ten Thousand years!\" Farther above this is another tablet with the characters \"Protect my black-haired people.\" The chief magistrate is obliged to repair here once a month, and to prostrate himself before these tablets.\n\nOther edifices worthy of notice are, a five-storied pagoda, a temple to the well-deserving mandarins Wong and Lau, and an altar to the Gods of Land and Grain. Outside the town is the execution ground, and here, in 1854, many rebels were decapitated, and there might be seen at times the heads hung up in baskets as a warning to the people.\n\nThe fort and city of Kowloong are sufficiently known, and there is but little to say of them. The low walls and miserable forts have often been visited by foreigners. The environs of Kowloong contain some curious mementoes of history, of which the rest of the district is destitute. Ping-tai, the last of the Southern Emperors of the Sung dynasty, fled with the remnant of his faithful adherents to the province of Canton. Near Kowloong he attempted to build himself a palace, which however he was unable to complete, and the situation is now marked by a temple to \"Pak-tai”北帝—the God of the North. One of his high officers died here, and his tomb is situated on a hill, which is called to this day Sung-wang-tai. These three characters are engraved on\n\n+", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205932, "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-1970", "page_number": 12, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "The Society was, however, very fortunate from the start in the support given by the British Council and its representative Mr. R. E. Lawry who later became the Hon. Secretary and also Vice-President of the Society and to whom the Society owes a great debt of gratitude. It was in the rooms of the British Council that the Society held its meetings until the City Hall became available. It is in the Council's rooms that the Council still holds its meetings and that a great part of the Society's books are kept ready for members to consult or take out. Each of Mr. Lawry's successors, including Mr. Bridges to-day, has become a member of the Council, and it has been the British Council that has provided the successive Hon. Secretaries—Mr. Lawry, Miss O. Michaeliones, Mr. T. H. Thomas and now Mr. J. L. H. Webster, C.M.G. The Society has no home of its own, and ever since its revival the British Council has been the base of its operations; and now after ten years of such continued support it is difficult to express in adequate terms our gratitude to the British Council and its Representatives in Hong Kong.\n\nThe Society was also fortunate in the full support given by its Patron, Sir Robert Black, who in spite of his arduous and manifold duties as Governor of Hong Kong rarely missed a meeting of the Society together with Lady Black and his family and staff and often took part in the Society's activities. Sir Robert is now an Honorary Member and still takes a keen interest in the affairs of the Society. Two other keen supporters and regular attendants were Sir Michael Hogan, the Chief Justice, one of our founder members, and also the late W. G. C. Knowles who was also a founder and life member both of whose support was much appreciated and both of whom are greatly missed at our meetings.\n\nDuring the year the Society met twelve times at which addresses of a high standard and of great variety and interest were given. And in the last two months not less than seven meetings were held including the lecture by Commander Warrington-Strong on porcelain, that of Professor Frank Chippindale on the Chinese Influence on Chippendale's Designs, that of Capt. Roger Pineau on Commodore Perry's Japan Expedition, the tour of Tsun Wan Temples under Mr. Graham Johnson, the Week-End Symposium on the Vegetation of Hong Kong conducted by Professor Thrower", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207997, "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-1977", "page_number": 36, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "20\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT\n\nseveral other rivers or streams flowing in, cause a muddy deposit, on which the houses are built. At high water they are surrounded; at low water, stand on a sheet of mud. On nearing it, we were encompassed by boats which preceded and followed us, and we passed the floating market, where women, wearing immense hats of palm-leaves, sell all sorts of edibles, balanced in their little canoes, now giving a paddle, now making a bargain, and dropping down with the tide, and again regaining their place when the bargain is finished. The first impression of the town is miserable. The houses are crowded and numerous, and even the palace does not present a more captivating aspect, for, though large, it is as incommodious as the worst. We had been seated but a few minutes when Pangeran Usop arrived, and directly afterwards the Sultan. He gave us ten leaf-cigars, and sirih, and, in short, showed us every attention; and, what was best of all, did not keep us very long. Our apartment was partitioned off from the public hall, a dark-looking place, but furnished with a table brought by us, and three rickety chairs, besides mattresses and plenty of mats. We were kept up nearly all night, which, after the fatigues of the day, was hard upon us.\n\nFurther observation confirmed us in the opinion that the town itself is miserable, and its locality on the mud fitted only for frogs or natives; but there is a level dry plain above the entrance of the Kiangi river, admirably suited for a European settlement; and across the Kiangi is swelling ground, where the residents might find delightful spots for their country-houses. The greatest annoyance to a stranger is the noisome smell of the mud when uncovered; and all plated or silver articles, even in the course of one night, get black and discoloured. The inhabitants I shall estimate moderately at 10,000, and the Kadien population are numerous amid the hills.\n\nAnd yet another graphic picture of the city of Brunei written in the early part of the present century. This is an observation by C. A. Bamfylde, an officer in the service of the Raja of Sarawak, Charles Brooke,11\n\nIt may be as well here to give a description of Brunei and of its Court.\n\nThe Brunei river flows into a noble bay, across which to the north lies the island of Labuan. Above the town the river is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "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 }, { "id": 213190, "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-1994", "page_number": 12, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "and a platform for members to publish, and in this connection may I draw your attention to Vice-President, Reverend Carl Smith's book recently \"Chinese Christmas\" which can be bought at all leading book stores, and also at the back of this room. In addition one of Hong Kong's oldest members and of this Society, Dr. Dan Waters, has published his own memories entitled unashamedly \"An Old Hand's Reflection\" - again it can be bought at all leading bookstores and at the back of this room.\n\nIn addition we have an excellent quality library with many interesting books and, not only is this steadily augmented by our past roving President, Dr. James Hayes, from Australia, but in this past year we have been given a magnificent collection of books on China and Hong Kong from Mr Archie Graham, who at the age of 91 has emigrated to New Zealand. All these books are now in a special room on the 3rd floor of the City Hall, High Block; and at this point I would like to give a sincere thanks to the Urban Services Department and their library staff in particular. In the past year not only have they moved the Society's library from the rather inaccessible Kowloon Public Library to the City Hall library in Central but they have computerised the collection and altogether made the whole collection far more accessible than it has been in the past. I really do urge you to visit this and see for yourself what is there, and of course members can borrow most of the books. For this improvement in our library facilities I must also thank our Librarian Mr. Y.C. Wan who has been very helpful in making all this possible.\n\nI said earlier that the Society makes its views known to the public: I should also add that public and Government organisations also seek the views of the Society, not only on an individual basis, but also on a collective one. I mentioned last year the assistance we gave to the Antiquities Advisory Board in helping them to grade some of Hong Kong's older buildings. At one time the Society had 20 members involved in this, but as I understand it since many of the eligible buildings have been graded then the members have declined: this project has been led by Dr. Dan Waters and we owe him and his team a vote of thanks for their hard work.\n\nOn a collective front the Society has continued to be very active in monitoring the situation over the Public Records Office. Last year I reported to you that we thought we were making some progress and the position at the moment, whilst not completely satisfactory, is considerably better than we hoped for two years ago. The Public Records Office is\n\nXI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213327, "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-1994", "page_number": 149, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "131\n\nwas 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.\n\nPlacing 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.\n\nHonorary Editor\n\nI 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.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213336, "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-1994", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "140\n\nbeing much lower. One reason for this may be connected with our public image. In the past, our leadership has been closely tied to the Hong Kong \"establishment\", and in tone and membership the Society itself was outwardly and distinctively British. We were probably more interested in learning and passing on information about China to other expatriates than in encouraging local Chinese membership. We could be snobbish and certainly inward-looking, and with very little difficulty could easily degenerate into a cosy little club of people who all knew each other and were mutually comfortable in the association of like with like.\n\nBy degrees, as Hong Kong changed, and as the knowledge of English widened to include a very large school population being educated up to secondary level and above, the Council had become more concerned with encouraging Chinese membership, especially as the Shanghai Chinese element mentioned above had diminished with the passage of time. We had thought of going bilingual, as one or two other of the local cultural societies had done from time to time. We also wondered whether we should change the Society's name by dropping the \"Royal\" prefix; though this has never been a bar to the continued existence, and undoubted success, of the RAS Branches elsewhere in Asia.30 These and other topics were discussed at length during a well-attended Symposium on the present and future state of the Society held in 1987, carefully prepared and largely motivated by the coming reversion of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.11\n\nFollowing the Symposium, there was a gratifying and considerable increase in membership, perhaps due to the re-energizing of the Society that took place then, and the number and quality of its programmes. However, to this day, there has been no great interest among the English-speaking Chinese public in becoming members. The fault may of course lie in ourselves, through being too British. Yet we have usually prided ourselves on being friendly and outgoing, especially in the last decade; and our venues have been popular and easily accessible ones, like the Urban Council's lecture rooms in the High Block of the City Hall in the Central business district and the lecture room at the Hong Kong Museum of History in Kowloon Park. Partly offsetting this discouraging trend, it should be noted that the Council and its working sub-committees have always included keen Chinese members who contribute much to the Society and its work.\n\nT", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213413, "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-1995", "page_number": 9, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "municipal library. For some reason which I have not been able to fathom South Korea has a Royal Asiatic Society - founded about thirty years ago and very flourishing it is.\n\nThe Hong Kong Branch however after its foundation in 1847 did not survive for very long and due to internal dissensions collapsed in 1859, not to be resuscitated until 1960 at the initiative of one of our past Presidents, Dr. J.R. Jones. It was resuscitated very much on the basis conceived by the founders, i.e. monthly lecture, an annual journal, the occasional symposium and publication. The one thing we do not have is our own building and permanent office, but to a certain extent we have overcome this since our library is very well housed in the Urban Council facilities on the 3rd floor of the High Block at the City Hall. In the past few years, however, the Society has added and expanded on the activities originally conceived by its founders, i.e. we have arranged a considerable outreach programme whereby we visit not only many places of historical interest, within Hong Kong, but travel to nearby places which has helped to put our perhaps rather narrow perspectives into a larger context. We have also arranged exhibitions, and we are now consulted on many aspects about Hong Kong, its history, the preservation of buildings, and other areas in which some expertise by our members is perceived to be important. In the last year for instance our members have been consulted by the Hong Kong Government, the Hong Kong Tourist Association, the British Broadcasting Corporation and an Australian Radio Station. We publish and provide a useful platform for our members to publish. In short we have expanded our activities and enlarged our fields of interest into wider fields than our founders originally conceived.\n\nThese developments are I feel to the Society's advantage. They have kept the membership up to a reasonable level with a good cross-section of nationalities. They have enhanced the Society's public profile, and they have given a strong basis for the Society to move forward confidently through 1997.\n\nThe above is of course a rather potted history of the Society but I think it is important to remind ourselves of the Society's background, because quite clearly we have entered changeable times and they are not likely to go away in the foreseeable future. Your Council has in the last year reviewed the society's activities and its objectives, in the\n\nviii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 } ]