[ { "id": 213942, "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": 12, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "1997-98 PRESIDENT'S REPORT ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY HONG KONG BRANCH PRESENTED AT THE 38TH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING FRIDAY 27 MARCH 1998\n\nThe year under review, from 26 March, 1997 to March 27, 1998 (from AGM to AGM), was a unique and historic period in that it spanned the Handover of the Territory from Britain to China.\n\nAs a direct result, what has changed? The short answer is, very little. To echo Mr Tung Chee-hwa's own words: 'It is (for our Branch) business as usual'. Neither the world nor Hong Kong, of course, stay still. You will see from this report that developments and changes, often subtle, are taking place, many of which have no connection with the Handover. For example, during the year we completed updating our Constitution. Nevertheless, for our Branch a great deal has happened and it has been a gratifying year.\n\nOne of the direct changes resulting from the Handover is the question of patronage. Previously the Chief Executive—formerly the Governor—has always been our Patron. It came as no real surprise, however, when we received a reply, in answer to our invitation for the new Chief Executive to become our Patron. The pivotal sentence read:\n\n'Mr Tung regrets that he will not be able to accept your request'.\n\nYour Councillors are of divided opinions as to whether having a Patron serves a useful purpose, and, if it does, who should be invited to take up the post. Views of members present here tonight will shortly be sought.\n\nFirst, turning to other matters.\n\nMembership\n\nDuring the past year Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, now living in Scotland, who as Sir David Wilson served as Governor of Hong Kong, graciously accepted our invitation to become an Honorary Member of our Branch. As a Sinologist, when he served in the Territory he\n\nxi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213948, "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": 18, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "to his daughter, Mrs R. Woodcock, for donating these to our Society.\n\nOur Branch is always looking for donations and if anybody wishes to find a good home for some interesting and valuable items or artifacts we should be grateful if you would consider donating them to the RASHKB.\n\nThe Public Records Office\n\nAlthough the RASHKB is apolitical and has no wish to be seen as a pressure group, it does make its views known when it has a case. You may remember that our Branch objected when the Hong Kong Government decided to move the Public Records Office from Central District into an industrial building in Tuen Mun. Besides writing letters and taking other action two Branch deputations appeared before the Legislative Council Panel on Information Policy in 1993. The outcome of our efforts was that a new, purpose-built Public Records Office was opened in Kwun Tong, in June 1997, shortly before the Handover. Our Branch played a major role in this achievement.\n\nThe Council\n\nSeveral of the 14 posts which comprise our Council require a special expertise. These include the Treasurer, the Librarian and our Editors. But, in addition to these 14 posts, other persons are co-opted on to the Council. They include the Reverend Carl Smith, our Honorary Vice President, and our Assistant Secretary, Mrs Sarah Parnell. Each Council Member is expected to pull at his or her respective oar and to row in unison. It is a working council.\n\nIn addition to the two co-opted persons named above, namely Carl Smith and Sarah Parnell, as well as the President, the following have sat on the Council during the past year: Doctors Elizabeth Sinn, Michael Lau, Patrick Hase, Joseph Ting, Peter Barker, Choi Chi-cheung and Anthony Siu, together with Robert Nield, Geoffrey Roper, Peter Halliday, Valery Garrett, Julia Chan, and Peter Rull. Also, although Anita Wilson stepped down from the Council at the last AGM, she was co-opted back on until she left the Territory last July. All those\n\nxvii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214120, "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": 188, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "157\n\nBearing in mind the RASHKB is sometimes seen as supporting the \"establishment”, in October 1989, four months after the Tiananmun incident, Dr James Hayes, then our President, wrote to the Chairman of the Consultative Committee for the Basic Law (Hayes 1989: xvi). As no reply was received a copy was then sent to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in London. Again, no reply was forthcoming.\n\nIn this letter, put very simply, the President wrote that the RASHKB hoped to be able to continue its activities in the interests of Hong Kong long after 1997. Indeed, members hoped to be able to carry on in the same way as they had been able to operate before 1997. The letter went on to say that the Branch's particular functions are to increase the common stock of knowledge and understanding of Hong Kong and to build a bridge between the Chinese and expatriate sectors of the local community, promoting social interaction and friendship among residents.\n\nLike a number of other societies in Hong Kong, over the years the RAS has in its own way contributed to peace and stability. It has helped to nurture the growing sense of territory identity, for example, that has formed especially since the end of the 1960s. In spite, however, of trying to recruit more Chinese members, especially in recent years, the Branch has had limited success.\n\nI am pleased to say, a few months after the handover of the Territory to China, the Branch is continuing to operate along similar lines as in the past. For the RASHKB, in other words, it is \"business as usual”.\n\nIt is accepted that the world, including Hong Kong, changes in various ways, and our Branch will need to keep its ear to the ground and move with the times. Although we remain basically an English-speaking Society, we did conduct some lectures in Cantonese during the winter of 1995-96. These were held in conjunction with the Exhibition, Hong Kong Going and Gone mounted jointly by our Branch and the Antiquities and Monuments Office.\n\nOur Society, which has a long and honourable history, consists mainly of active members who make up a generally friendly, cosmopolitan body of people with similar interests. In spite of the fact", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214155, "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": 13, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY (HONG KONG BRANCH)\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1998-1999 PRESENTED AT THE\n\n39TH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING HELD ON FRIDAY 19TH MARCH 1999\n\nCome July 1, 1999, it will be two years since the Handover of the Territory, from Britain to China. As far as the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch (RASHKB) is concerned, little, you will see as you read these pages, has basically changed. However, inevitably, we are moving with the times.\n\nIt has been jokingly said that a careful driver is someone who looks both ways before he or she goes through a red light and certainly, with our evolving role as we enter the new millennium, we need to think things through thoroughly before making drastic changes. We are, as you know, affiliated to the RAS Headquarters in London and, although we do communicate on occasions we are almost entirely left to plough our own furrow. It is, after all, important that our Branch is thoroughly rooted in Hong Kong. Perhaps I should add here, however, that we still, after almost two years, have not found a suitable person to be our local patron. Nevertheless, we seem to be managing quite well without one although we have not shut the door entirely.\n\nI will now report on various aspects of our Branch over the past year which, I am pleased to say, has continued to be strong and active, thanks largely to the work of its Councillors and Activity Committee members.\n\nMembership\n\nAt the end of 1990, the then President reported that our Branch comprised a total of 718 members, although this number dropped to 676 by early 1991. This was partly, we were told in that year's report, because of a 'more thorough weeding out of those who had not paid their subscriptions or had left Hong Kong.'\n\nAs at 16 March, 1999, our Branch's numbers have dropped to around 580. This includes both 486 local and 94 overseas members of\n\nxii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214597, "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": 12, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY HONG KONG BRANCH\n\n1999/2000 PRESIDENT'S REPORT PRESENTED AT THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY, ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING ON FRIDAY 24TH MARCH 2000\n\nNo man can know a country who only knows what is happening in it today. Anon.\n\nAs you know the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch (RASHKB) took the 1997 Handover of the Territory, from Britain back to China, in its stride. That Hong Kong has rejoined its Motherland makes little difference to the way our Branch operates. More recently, we have taken a further leap into what most people have come to accept as the New Millennium. This year is also, incidentally, the 40th anniversary since our Branch was reconstituted. Our Branch was first established in Hong Kong in 1847. Unfortunately, it survived only 12 years. It then slumbered for a century and was reconstituted in 1960. Now, moving on into the 21st century means in effect that the RASHKB has played an active part in the local community during three centuries. That is from early British colonial times to the present day when Hong Kong forms a part of the People's Republic of China. Our Society is pleased to have been able to contribute to our community in a variety of ways as this report amply illustrates.\n\nAlthough we are a Royal Society with our head office in London we are at the same time, with branches in several parts of the world, international in character. Together, we share a rich history. Nevertheless our local Branch ploughs its own furrow entirely and we receive no financial assistance from Headquarters. Our Branch is very much part of the Hong Kong scene doing its best to serve the local community, foster goodwill and provide close working relationships between locals and expatriates.\n\nLet us examine various aspects of our Branch's activities since the 1999 Annual General Meeting one year ago. I should emphasise that the Branch has continued to be strong and virile as you will see from the following pages.\n\nxi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215613, "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-2001", "page_number": 390, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "341\n\nNEXUS OF VILLAGES BY UNICORN DANCING TEAMS\n\nCHIU HANG SHI\n\nIt was chilly, cloudy and rainy on Sunday, January 27, 2002 in Hoi Pui Tsuen, Pat Heung. This village is inhabited by the Fan, the Cheung and the Kan. This area was quite inaccessible before the construction of the Tai Lam Tunnel and recently the West Rail Station.\n\nSome 60 people, mainly young men and some leaders of the village, have been gathered in front of the village office since 2:00pm in a jovial manner. Inside the village office, a temporary altar was set up facing the entrance of the building with a tablet of hand-written characters on it. Some seven unicorn dancing teams arrived by 5:00pm. All teams were first greeted by the unicorn team of the host village and then each team proceeded to the two ancestral halls (Fan's and Cheung's) to pay tribute to the ancestors. A banquet of basin meal of 120 tables was served in the evening.\n\nThe organizer of this celebration was Nam Shing Tong. This celebration has been held every year after the Handover. The reason for doing so was that this Tong has had some extra money left every year.\n\nAt first one might have no idea why unicorn dancing teams from some apparently unrelated areas would be invited to come. 1. Yuen Long, well, it is reasonable to have a team from Yuen Long. Hoi Pui Tsuen is in Yuen Long, 2. Shatin, it is quite the other part of the Territory, and 3. Sai Kung, it is obviously very far away. Later, I was enlightened by being told that they were from the same instructor, Master So. The unicorn dancing team from Sai Kung was particularly able to draw one's attention - it was known as Pak Kei Lun (Northern unicorn), which was black, as different from the unicorns commonly seen in Hong Kong, which were bright and colourful. The Pak Kei Lun had two small horns, which might, ironically, make it no longer qualified to be a unicorn, in a Western sense. The ordinary unicorn had five colour strips around the neck: red, yellow, blue, white and black, resembling the five directions: south, centre, east, west and north.\n\nPage 390\n\nPage 391", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215908, "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-2002", "page_number": 207, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "141\n\nDr. Waters arrived in Hong Kong in 1954, at the age of 34, not so young but not so old.\n\n\"I can remember there used to be parades in the street over in Chatham Road of troops marching, the army marching and there were British types around with bowler hats and furled umbrellas and things like that. And it was then really very colonial and very British. Funnily enough, I never realised it would change so much...I mean I thought things would be like that forever.\"\n\nHe sailed to Hong Kong on a ship and the journey took 31 days. He came to work for the colonial service and right from the beginning, he had come to stay. Waters sold his builder's business back in England to take on a permanent job teaching for the now Hong Kong Polytechnic. Waters met his wife, a local Hong Kong Chinese, in the territory. In his book \"Faces of Hong Kong: An Old Hand's Reflection,\" Waters talks about how his father-in-law never approved of their relationship. His father-in-law died in 1959, and Waters and his wife married in 1960.\n\nHis mother-in-law and sisters-in-law welcomed Waters to the family. But it was a time when interracial marriages were not tolerated by many. At work, things were less than comfortable, at times.\n\n\"It's got much better,\" said Waters. \"I married on the Queen's birthday in 1960. We were married in the morning and we went to the Governor's garden party at Government House in the afternoon. But, oh yes, there was without a doubt a certain amount of racism and there was a certain amount of ostracism in the institution where I worked. I felt it myself. Now of course, it's very common for mixed marriages.\"\n\n72\n\nWaters joined the RAS in 1964 but hadn't heard of the society before then. He was invited to join the RAS Council in 1990 and became president in 1996, just before the handover. Since the handover, the RAS is one of the few organisations to have kept the 'Royal' in the name.\n\n\"No one has bothered us. We carry on the same way. We make sure our roots are planted here.\"\n\nWaters very naturally falls into Cantonese when he speaks. Every once in a while, his statements end with 'hai m hai' (isn't that right)?", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215916, "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-2002", "page_number": 215, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "149\n\nbecause they had this American idea that once the handover is made, that everything would be a total mess in Hong Kong,” said Smith. \"Nothing left, you know. An entirely mistaken idea.”\n\nSmith decided to go with the Library of Congress because it has the financial backing from the US government his cards will be taken care of - and because the library is accessible to all.\n\nFor 13 years, before settling in Hong Kong, Smith was pastor at a U.S. church he established. At 42, he came to the territory in 1960 to teach for the Church of Christ in China,\n\nSmith taught through a translator at first, and then his students began speaking English to him, so he never got a real grasp of the Cantonese dialect.\n\nBut the Reverend reads and writes characters and has used these skills in his work. Smith has written many articles over the last 40 years and has published two books.\n\nSmith considers his article on \"The Emergence of Chinese Elites in Hong Kong\" his most significant work because it appears in bibliographies most often.\n\n\"People are always polite and they say nice things...if we're going to look at early Hong Kong we're going to have to go and look at the article.\"\n\nSmith's book “Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen and the Church in Hong Kong\" was published in 1985 and coincided with the 25th anniversary of the re-establishment of the RAS Hong Kong branch.\n\nJames Hayes said in the foreword that it was a time to look ahead to the handover and to the Society's continued contribution to the study of Hong Kong culture and history.\n\nThe Society held a one-day seminar that year to talk about the '97 issue. Opinions were divided on keeping the Royal in the name and Smith was one of the ones opposed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216096, "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-2002", "page_number": 395, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "329\n\naccount. It was an old colonial style building with paddle fans suspended from ceilings. This structure was replaced by an air-conditioned building in 1959, which was, in turn, replaced by another new Standard Chartered building opened formally in 1990. In the 1950s many buildings were old, roomy, colonial style, low-rise buildings, with colonnades, wide balconies and large windows or French doors in order to allow for \"through draught.\" That was important. Windows usually were fitted with louvres or jalousies.\n\nI was taken to meet the Director of Education whose office was then in the lovely old French Mission Building (now the Court of Final Appeal) at the top of Battery Path. I had to sign the visitor's book at Government House. 'Unless you do this,' I was warned, 'you will not be invited to the garden party on the Queen's birthday.' In spite of what people would often have you believe they were generally proud to receive an invitation from the Governor. Just as today they like to receive an invitation to the reception, in the Convention and Exhibition Centre, on China's National Day. (When a HKBRAS group visited Government House in January 1997, shortly before The Handover, just about every member was keen to sign the book.) There was no doubt, too, that Hong Kong people felt greatly honoured if they were decorated by the Queen just as they feel honoured today if they receive a Hong Kong Special Administrative Region award.\n\nMy Yorkshire colleague, back in early 1955, also introduced me to a reliable comprador. In this sense, I mean a grocer. In fact I still deal with the Asia Company to this day. Compared to the aseptic, soulless supermarkets I have wonderful memories of street-corner comprador shops stocked with goodies, including kam wa hams hanging from ceilings. I am, of course, talking of times when cheung saams were far more common and years before Big Macs and Kentucky Fried Chicken had made their debuts in the Territory. Regarding the latter, one person commented to me, 'We Chinese have a 1,000 ways to cook a chicken. Kentucky will never make it!' But although they failed once they returned to Hong Kong, Kentucky Fried Chicken has been a success story.\n\nWhen I arrived I had to register and obtain an identity card. I was quite embarrassed. On arrival at the North Point office, as I was a European, I was taken by my Chinese colleague straight to the front of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216110, "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-2002", "page_number": 409, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "343 said to have returned 'mysteriously' in 1945. They were watched carefully during the 1967 riots. When I went back to Marine Police Headquarters a year or so after the 1997 Handover, from Britain to China, the pigeons were no longer there. \"They are flying around Tsim Sha Tsui,' I was informed.\n\nIn many respects the social history of the Territory, together with its myths and legends, has been as exciting as any novel.\n\nHalf a century ago many of us who lived and worked in colonial Hong Kong gave limited thought to the future and the forces of modernity. Even if we had, it is unlikely that we would have envisaged anything like the degree of change that has actually taken place during which the world map has been redrawn.\n\nIf a person is unable to adjust to change then, certainly, Hong Kong is not the place to be. If it is any consolation the pace of change is even more likely to accelerate in the future. In this paper I have looked at the past 50 years with special emphasis on the 1950s and 60s. What will the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region be like in the middle of the 21st century?\n\nBut that has to be another story.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]