[
    {
        "id": 204839,
        "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-1964",
        "page_number": 142,
        "title": "RAS-1964",
        "content_text": "A RECONNAISSANCE OF MA WAN\n\nNOTES\n\n117\n\n1 For a more detailed account of British trade to Canton at this period see J. L. Cranmer Byng, An Embassy to China. Being the Journal kept by Lord Macartney during his Embassy to the Emperor Ch'ien-lung 1793-1794 (Longmans, Green, 1962), 4-17.\n\n2 Macartney's own journal printed in J. L. Cranmer Byng, op. cit.,\n\nFor Parish and Alexander see Appendix A, 313-16.\n\n111-112.\n\nJ. L. Cranmer-Byng, “The Defences of Macao in 1794: a British Assessment\" in Journal of Southeast Asian History Vol. 5 No. 1 (1964).\n\n4 Printed in H. B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635-1834, 5 Vols. (O.U.P. 1926-9), I., 237.\n\n5 This report is preserved among the Macartney documents in the Wason collection on China and the Chinese at Cornell University, No. 371 (part). I wish to acknowledge my thanks to the Director of Libraries at Cornell for permission to reproduce this document in full. In doing so I have modernized the spelling and the use of capital letters. I also wish to acknowledge permission received from the authorities of the British Museum to reproduce Parish's sketch map from the original preserved in the British Museum, Add. MS. 19822 (art. 13).\n\n6 The Portuguese name of an island close to Macao which also gave its name to the anchorage there.\n\n7 An officer of the Bombay Marine who had been sent to Macao in 1793 in command of the Endeavour brig, one of two surveying ships, which were earmarked for the use of the embassy. The Jackall had sailed from England in 1792 as tender to the Lion. Both the Endeavour and Jackall sailed from Chusan to Canton in October 1793, but I have not discovered why Proctor was transferred to the Jackall or why the original survey ship, the Endeavour, was not used for this purpose.\n\n8 A large island about twice the size of the island of Hong Kong. The east coast of Lantao, although it has at least one good bay- Silvermine Bay is not sufficiently protected from the wind and is too exposed to the sea to make a good harbour for ships. Lantao Peak rises to approximately three thousand feet and is a useful local landmark. The Chinese name for the island is Tai Yu Shan.\n\n+\n\n9 Chek Lap Kok *#, a long island just off Tung Chung bay, See map facing page 27. Like other ports of Lantao it appears to have been more prosperous in the past than at present. The 1911 census gave its population as 77, of whom 55 were men. They probably worked in its stone quarries.\n\nto This refers to the Tung Chung valley, which included a fort between the villages of Ha Ling Pei and Sheung Ling Pei. Tung Chung ranked as a cheng M. See Rev. Krone \"A Notice of the Sanon District\" in Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Part VI (Hong Kong 1859) p. 82.\n\n+\n\n11 This is correct, since presumably Parish was referring to the head land of San Tau #. From here the coast runs sharply SW to Tai O.\n\n12 Two islands known as the Brothers, consisting of the West and East Brothers.\n\n13 In the vicinity of Tsing Lung Tau\n\n\"Green dragon head\",\n\non the coast of the New Territories between Tsun Wan and Castle Peak.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r",
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    {
        "id": 205519,
        "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-1968",
        "page_number": 61,
        "title": "RAS-1968",
        "content_text": "56\n\nNOTES ON HONG KONG LIBRARIES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY\n\nH. A. RYDINGS*\n\nThose of us who have watched the rapid development of libraries of all kinds in Hong Kong since the new University Library building was opened in 1961 may sometimes think that there is no library history worth considering for the first hundred years of the existence of the Colony. Certainly an appeal to members of the Hong Kong Library Association, made some two years ago, for any information on the early history of Hong Kong libraries met with no immediate response. Later, however, my colleague Mr. G. W. Bonsall, in searching through local newspapers and other sources for information on other subjects, came across a number of items about libraries, which he kindly brought to my notice. The present article is based upon this, slightly augmented from other materials, and in no way purports to be a comprehensive history of Hong Kong libraries up to 1900. It is evident that much more remains to be found by the diligent searcher before such a history can be written. For the moment, however, this brief sketch based on what has so far come to light may be of interest as an introduction to Hong Kong's library history.\n\nForemost of the early libraries in the Colony is undoubtedly the Victoria Library and Reading Rooms. 'Colonial', writing in 1933, stated: “A privately organised library was established in Hong Kong as far back as 1848. A small library with attached reading rooms was run by this organisation for some years, and really formed the basis on which the City Hall library was subsequently established.\" Although 'Colonial' does not name the library, he goes on to say: “In 1871, probably in view of the coming into being of the public library, the original institution, retaining its more or less private character, was organised into a club, which was known as the Victoria Club.\" As will be seen later, this makes it certain that the reference is to the Victoria Library.\n\nThe next reference2 found to the Victoria Library & Reading Rooms is a report of the Annual General Meeting held on June\n\n* Mr. Rydings has been University Librarian at the University of Hong Kong since 1961. He is a member of Council of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society and is currently its Hon. Librarian.",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205524,
        "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-1968",
        "page_number": 66,
        "title": "RAS-1968",
        "content_text": "NOTES ON HONG KONG LIBRARIES\n\n61\n\ncurrent, such as the Friend of China and North China Herald. The connections of the Hong Kong trading community with Australia, India and Southeast Asia, as well as with Great Britain, are represented, though there is an absence of American publications.\n\nOn May 8th of this same year, 1867, the China Mail carried an editorial on “Our Libraries\", which makes it clear that some of the other European communities in Hong Kong were equally well provided with library facilities. The German and Portuguese clubs are mentioned as having active libraries. The article goes on to remark upon the little use which is made of the Morrison Library, not because of restrictions imposed by those in charge of it, but on account of its out-of-the-way situation\n\nthe same criticism which had been made of the Victoria Library in 1852, and was later made of the University of Hong Kong Library in 1961. On the Victoria Library, after praising the exertions of a few in prolonging its existence, the China Mail continues that it is \"by no means so well supported as it deserves to be.\" The reason, it is suggested, is that the club-libraries had to a great extent filled the place it occupied fifteen or more years before, and as the funds available for book purchases decreased with the declining membership year by year the Victoria Library had become “but an inferior copy of its more thriving brother at the English club.\" The China Mail continues by suggesting that it would be profitable for both institutions if the Morrison and Victoria Libraries were brought under one roof, and whilst preserving their separate identities allowing subscribers of the latter to use the former (and presumably vice versa). As will be seen later, this suggestion by the China Mail met with a more favourable response than the earlier proposal, to convert the Victoria Library into a book club. The editorial concludes with the suggestion that the combined institutes might invite the deposit of free copies of \"books, papers and pamphlets upon China, Japan, the Eastern archipelago or any portion of the world tenanted by the Chinese race\", in return for which a catalogue raisonné of these publications would be issued every three or six months, and distributed free to subscribers as a kind of advertisement. \"If the same principle were extended to general literature, it would be found that a very large number of European publishers and the consignees of books in China would gladly send 'review copies'. The question of expense would be solved by adopting this plan entirely in place of purchasing new works, the sum now paid",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205526,
        "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-1968",
        "page_number": 68,
        "title": "RAS-1968",
        "content_text": "NOTES ON HONG KONG LIBRARIES\n\n63\n\nmade in the previous May, that the Morrison Library should be amalgamated with the other.\n\nTwo years later, Hong Kong's first City Hall was nearing completion, and the subject of libraries was once again in the news. An unknown writer, quoted by 'Colonial' in 1933, wrote on May 5th, 1869: \"The library room which will be entirely completed in a few days will before long contain a collection of books properly assorted and catalogued which, if not very extensive, will at least be the best collection in South China. It may be confidently hoped that its resources will be increased by private gift... The Morrison Library which forms the nucleus of the collection is... in a state which necessitates the outlay of nearly a thousand dollars... The former Asiatic Society's Library has also [been promised to the] librarian without... prospect of receiving with it any funds towards its restoration\".\n\nFrom a much later source we learn more about the City Hall, which it is worth noting was a private enterprise, not an official one, although Government provided the building site and a grant in aid at its foundation. “In 1871 the library consisted of 8,000 volumes, 3,000 of which were unconditionally presented by the trustees of the Victoria Library.\" This confirms the statement made by 'Colonial' and quoted earlier in this article, and vindicates the China Mail in its campaign to bring together the Victoria and Morrison Libraries. The arrangement with the Club Lusitano for the housing of the Victoria Library therefore lasted at most only four years, from 1867 to 1871. This same source also quotes the terms of the gift under which the Morrison Education Society presented its books \"as a free gift for the use of the public, on condition that in consideration of this gift and of the great services of Dr. Morrison to both European and Chinese, the books be kept distinct from all other collections in the City Hall, and designated 'the Morrison Library' in perpetuation of the great missionary's memory.\" Although there is little call in the present day for use of the Morrison Library by the public, the conditions imposed on the gift in 1869 to the City Hall are still observed, and the Morrison Library, housed since 1914 in the University of Hong Kong Library, is kept as a separate entity named in memory of its founder. Since the story of this collection has been covered in detail elsewhere, no more will be said here about the Morrison Library.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205528,
        "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-1968",
        "page_number": 70,
        "title": "RAS-1968",
        "content_text": "NOTES ON HONG KONG LIBRARIES\n\n65\n\nbe removed for use within the Court, in Chambers, or the Registry, but were not to be taken further: whether this applied only to barristers and solicitors, who were privileged to use the Library subject to the rules, or also to the Judiciary and Law Officers who were entitled to use it, is not clear.\n\nMr. J. W. Norton-Kyshe, the Registrar of the Supreme Court, whose useful history of the laws of Hong Kong is the source of the information on its Library, managed to persuade the Government in 1896 that an annual grant should be made for the purchase of books. In 1897 this amounted to $500, and in the following year it was doubled,12\n\nCertainly the history of Hong Kong libraries in the nineteenth century is by no means restricted to those which have been considered in this article, although they are probably the most important. There must, for example, have been libraries in the various schools, both Government sponsored and others, though the condition of school libraries in the Colony even today suggests that they would not have been particularly well organised fifty or more years ago. Government departments other than the Supreme Court must also have had collections of books. All these possibilities, quite apart from the existence of private libraries, both Chinese and English, need to be investigated. What has been discovered so far, however, contributes to refute the common notion of Hong Kong as a cultural desert, and to indicate that library history in Hong Kong goes back almost as far as the history of the Colony itself.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 V. H. G. Jarrett, under the pseudonym of 'Colonial' contributed a series of articles to the South China Morning Post between 17th June, 1933 and 13th April, 1935 on \"Old Hong Kong\". Typescripts of these articles were rearranged alphabetically by subject and bound in four volumes (unpaginated) in the S. C. M. P. Office. By kind permission of the Managing Director, a Xerox copy of this set is available in the University of Hong Kong Library. This extract is from the article headed \"Public Library.\"\n\n2 Hongkong Register, vol. 25, 1852, pp. 94-5.\n\n3 At this date (1852) prices were normally quoted in Spanish or Mexican dollars, equivalent to about 4/2d sterling.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205852,
        "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-1969",
        "page_number": 158,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "152\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nwhich they appear. We know, too, that the author did not go to the East until 1849 when he received the appointment of Her Majesty to be Consul in Canton.\n\nNow it is entirely possible that Bowring saw an illustration of the church somewhere. Mr. David Keir, author of THE BOWRING STORY (The Bodley Head, Ltd., London, 1962) to whom I submitted this problem, informs me that Bowring visited Portugal in 1815, and may have run across one there. But it is also possible that he had to go no farther than London. \"At the Hispano Portuguese Library in Belgrave Square,\" Keir writes, \"there is an illustration of the church.\" It \"is a high pagoda-like building, rising above many steps, with a Cross at its peak. As most churches have a cross on the roof somewhere, it is still inconclusive whether this was the church he had in mind.” “It is also possible (for instance),\" Mr. Keir continues, \"that he might have been inspired to write the hymn following his visit to the Pena Convent in Portugal - an experience which seems to have impressed him very much, for he writes in his Autobiographical Recollections:\n\n'I also went to the Pena Convent, which towers [note the use of this word] over the highest of the precipices. The rude path, which leads to it, winds round the rugged steep, and if ever there was a spot fitted for those who would withdraw from the world, it is this. Here might misanthropy revel in perfect abstraction for scarcely could any earthly idea enter into that secluded and weather-beaten temple....'\n\nCan any reader of the Journal offer any better hypothesis? Columbia University, 1969.\n\nL. CARRINGTON GOODRICH\n\nBOOKS FROM THE VICTORIA LIBRARY\n\nAs a kind of postscript to \"Notes on Hong Kong Libraries in the Nineteenth Century,\" which appeared in the last volume of this Journal between pp. 56-66, it may be of interest to record that two titles formerly the property of the Victoria Library and Reading Rooms (1848-1871) have come to light.\n\nThe first was bought by Mr. James Hayes, our Hon. Editor, from a 'fly-by-night' bookstall in Causeway Bay. This is:",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205853,
        "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-1969",
        "page_number": 159,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n153\n\nLand, labour and gold; or, Two years in Victoria, with visits to Sydney and Van Diemen's Land, by William Howitt, London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855. 2 vols.\n\nThe chop of the Victoria Library and Reading Rooms appears on the front end-paper of each volume, with the shelf-mark C244 written in ink. The transfer of this work to the City Hall Library in 1871 is evidenced by its chop on the half-title and title-page. It is interesting to speculate whether the selection of this book, the title of which on the spine is \"Two years in Victoria”, was due to a confusion between Victoria, Australia, and Victoria, Hong Kong. At least one user of the Victoria Library, or possibly the City Hall Library, got as far as p.57 of vol. 1, since a bookmark consisting of a strip from an old Hong Kong newspaper (not identified) is inserted there.\n\nSimilar marks of successive ownership appear on the other book, though here the Victoria Library chop appears on the title page and dedication leaf as well as on the front end-paper or fly-leaf. The shelf-mark on the fly-leaf appears to be F404. The title-page is reproduced at plate 18, to show the two ownership chops. The rectangular chop at the top is the processing chop of the University of Hong Kong Library, to which this book came as a gift from an unknown source in 1962; it is impressed on the back of the title-page, but shows through.\n\nAll three volumes are bound in a typical mid-Victorian style, brown polished calf with marbled paper. The shelf-marks do not appear on the spines, though they may have been on labels which have long since come off. The precise significance of the shelf-marks is not clear, though probably they were similar to those used in the Morrison Library, where the letter indicated a broad subject grouping (e.g. C for books of travel, D for natural history), each volume being given a running number within the appropriate group when added to the collection.\n\nIt is much to be regretted that no copies of the catalogues of any of the earlier Hong Kong libraries appear to have survived, other than the 1873 catalogue of the Morrison Library, when it was located in the old City Hall.\n\nHong Kong, 1969.\n\nH. A. RYDINGS",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205933,
        "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": 13,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "and last Monday's lecture by Dr. Hu on Flowering Trees. The most popular activities each year are the annual symposia held under the Chairmanship of Dr. Topley and the occasional excursions, such as the tour of Old Shau Kei Wan organised last year by Mr. J. W. Hayes. These tours, as well as being studies in the history and social life of Hong Kong, are popular and prove of great service in bringing members together, giving them an opportunity of knowing each other and welding them into one Society of common interest and purpose. In accord with the objects of the parent society and the principles enunciated by Sir John Davis, we have tried to direct attention to practical projects and to natural history as well as to literary pursuits. Thus, a week-end symposium was organised in 1968 under Professor Dwyer of the University of Hong Kong on the subject of The Changing Face of Hong Kong, and recently another week-end symposium was organised by Professor Thrower, as mentioned above. A record of these studies is being edited and will in due course be published by the Society and so make a valuable contribution to the natural history of the Colony.\n\nThe Journal of the Society maintains its high academic standard and interest under the Editorship of Mr. J. W. Hayes. The tenth volume is in the press and will be out later this year. Vol. I, which had long been out of print, has now been reprinted and is now available to meet the increasing demand of members and of scholars and readers overseas for a complete set of the Society's publications, which are now becoming very valuable and much sought after by libraries and learned institutions as well as by individual readers all over the world.\n\nOur greatest problem is our library, and our great sorrow is that our resources do not enable us to rent a room to house our books, let alone to pay a librarian. The original society in Hong Kong had been granted by Sir George Bonham a room in the old Supreme Court to hold its meetings and to house its library. When the Society ran into difficulties in 1858, it handed over its valuable library of 400 books on trust to the Morrison Education Society, which also kept its library in the Old Court House, and in 1869 the Morrison Society presented its own library and that of the Royal Asiatic Society to the City Hall Library. I feel, therefore, that the Government is not without obligation to the Society in respect of the housing of its present library. In Shanghai",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
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    },
    {
        "id": 206131,
        "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": 211,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "204\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nbecause there is a much greater body of pre-war material than the items included here. This criticism could have been turned away by an indication, beyond the qualifications already made in the introduction, that this was a selected bibliography.\n\nThe introduction is a useful and stimulating part of the work. Besides explaining how the bibliography has been brought together, and why, it draws attention to some of the lacunae in Hong Kong studies, especially in the social science field. However this is surely as much due to the lack of a social science faculty at the University of Hong Kong until recently and the small size of the faculties in the colleges of the Chinese University, than, as the writers suggest, to 'purposive decisions..... to avoid issues with important policy overtures'. The complaint that nowhere in Hong Kong is there a full collection of Hongkongiana is still, I believe, justified and should be remedied... perhaps to the extent of compiling a master list of books on the subject available in the main Hong Kong libraries.\n\nAs a publication, it is well produced and printed, though it bears many marks of hasty compilation and checking that were probably due to its issue coinciding with the departure of the joint compilers from Hong Kong. These should be put right on a second issue. And, if I may end on a personal note, I always like to see titles and authors on the spine - it is so much more convenient when looking for a book.\n\nHong Kong, 1970.\n\n+\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nFOLK RELIGION IN AN URBAN SETTING. A STUDY OF HAKKA VILLAGERS IN TRANSITION. Morris I. Berkowitz, Frederick P. Brandauer, John H. Reid. Hong Kong, Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, 1969.\n\nAs the first book-length study of Chinese religious practices in Hong Kong, this report deserves our careful consideration. Studies of Chinese folk religious practices are rare enough, and those of Hakka villagers are still rarer; therefore this general study of Hakka religion is very welcome indeed. The book represents the first of a series of research projects to be conducted by the Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture.",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
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    },
    {
        "id": 206461,
        "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-1972",
        "page_number": 9,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "Council office, was appointed to fill the vacancy of Hon Secretary as required by Article 11 of our Rules. You will, however, not find her name on the Council list in the papers sent you relating to the business of this Annual General Meeting, for she left the Colony on transfer, only a few months after taking over the duties of Hon. Secretary. We were fortunate in being able to persuade Mr. Michael Smithies, a member of the administrative staff of the University of Hong Kong, to undertake the secretarial duties. We are indeed fortunate in obtaining his services.\n\nThe Journal. During the first decade of its existence, The Journal has rightly become a recognized repository for information concerning eastern Asia, and is to be found in the shelves of many libraries of cultural and academic institutions throughout the world. Like all such publications however, the cost of maintaining its size and standard has risen tremendously of late and your Council has very reluctantly had to raise the selling price per volume from fifteen to eighteen dollars to meet this additional expenditure. This has been done however without affecting the free issue of one volume per member per year. Members are only affected if they wish to have extra copies; then they, along with non-members, will have to pay at the increased rate for both new issues and for back numbers.\n\nAccommodation. This is as much an institutional problem in Hong Kong as it is a problem for private individuals and business firms.\n\nThe problem affects us in two ways: accommodation for our library and the storage of our journals, and accommodation for our meetings. Regarding the former, for years we have been fortunate in having help from the Librarian of the University of Hong Kong, and from the Hong Kong Representative of the British Council. But in both these cases, our increasing needs can no longer be met without detriment to the space requirements of our friends. We have, therefore, now had to rent godown space for our own bulk needs, although the British Council has very kindly agreed to continue to house our library books on its shelves for the convenience of members. We are most grateful for this help.",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h",
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    {
        "id": 206667,
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        "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-1972",
        "page_number": 215,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n209 \n\nat Castle Douglas. It was a very large building as befitted the size and importance of the Press, and can be seen on the old photographs on view in the entrance corridor at University Hall. \n\nAn account by the Rev. Fr. Leon Trivière states: \n\nThe press used 67,899 matrices, which shows how much work was carried on at this house. Thousands of examples of catechisms, prayer-books, works on dogma and morality, spirituality and meditation, the pastorate, canon law, sermons, catechesis, liturgy were brought out. These books were published in 28 languages: Chinese, Annamite, Latin, French, English, Chamorro, Tibetan, Laotian, Malay, Tho (Cao-Bang), Cambodian, Japanese, Thai (Chau-Laos), Banhnar, Portuguese, Kanaka, Lolo, Tagalog, Yap, German, Italian, Siamese, Kanao, Korean, Dioi, Palau, Spanish and Ainu. Notable among the publications of Nazareth Press was an amazing collection of dictionaries printed in twelve languages. A certain number of them were honoured by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, and sought after by great Universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, London, etc. ...or by famous Libraries specialising in Oriental Languages. Numerous works by missionaries attached to the École Française d'Extrême-Orient, the Académie Stanislaus and other bodies engaged in scientific research, were printed at Nazareth \n\nNazareth House. Considerable building alterations and additions were made to Castle Douglas by the Mission, including, some years after its occupation, an extensive reconstruction of the original building which was in danger of collapsing. The additions included dormitory accommodation, a chapel, a library and the printing house. The new House was first used in May 1896 and the chapel was blessed in October of that year. A life of prayer and work on editing, translating, printing and proof-reading was inaugurated at the former Castle Douglas, and was to continue until the Japanese Occupation in 1941-1945. The house continued to be used by the Fathers in those years, but printing stopped. Work began again after the war; but with the establishment of the People's Government at Peking in 1949, continental China was soon closed to foreign missionary effort, and in 1953 the Central Council in Paris decided to give up Nazareth House. It was bought by the University of Hong Kong in 1954, to be used as a Hall of Residence for students.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207031,
        "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-1974",
        "page_number": 102,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "96\n\nR. G. IRWIN\n\n\"publishers for advertisement of spurious writings.\" In any case this work was subsequently proscribed by the Ch'ien-lung emperor, exception being taken especially to the last four chuan, written by Wang Ju-nan (T. Chi-yung), a fellow townsman of Chung Hsing, whose preface is dated 1660. It furnishes a record of the final years of the Ming and the advent of the Ch'ing. The sympathy of the author for the former is manifest by the preservation of its chronology throughout, i.e. to 1645/6. Copies of this work are available in several important libraries, such as the National Central Library (Taichung), the Naikaku Bunko (Tokyo), the Library of Congress (Washington), and the University of Leiden. The copy at Columbia University lacks chuan 11 and 12, and that at the Library of Congress has had its objectionable features partially effaced, \"but in no case sufficiently as to be illegible.\"\n\n4. The modern romanization of \"Ming-kouron-hong-vou-y-oyongo Taisi-yen” is “xoeng u i oyonggo tacixiyan,\" which proves to be a Manchu version of Hung-wu pao-hsün, the translation having been done by Kang Lin and others. It is in 6 chuan, and was published in 1646, the 3rd year of Shun-chih.\n\nde Mailla, who was in China from 1703 to 1748, relied on three sources, in addition to his personal observation, for the account of the early Ch'ing period which comprises Vol XI. The editor's introductory note (Vol. XI, page 2) refers to them as follows:\n\nOn a déjà parlé, dans un note sur les MING, du Tong-kien-ming-ki-tsuen-tsai, publié la quinzième année de Kang-hi: le docteur Tchu-tsiny-yen, qui en est l'auteur, a conduit ce morceau d'histoire jusqu'en 1659, que les princes de la famille des MING perdirent tout-à-fait l'espérance de recouvrer le sceptre impériale. Le P. de Mailla a écrit d'après lui; & quand cette source a tari, il a en recours au Tsin-tching-ping-ting-sou-han-fang-lio, ou relation des guerres que l'empereur Gin-ti (Kang-hi) fit au Kaldan des Eleutes. Ces Mémoires, rédigés par quatre ministres d'état & par soixante-dix mandarins tant Chinois que Mantchéous, choisis dans le tribunal des Hanlin & parmi les docteurs du premier ordre, sont écrits dans les deux langues, Chinois & Tartare; ils contiennent le détail de l'expédition contre les Eleutes, & l'abrégé des autres événemens du règne de Kang-hi",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 208482,
        "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-1978",
        "page_number": 206,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\nMISSING MAPS: SOWERBY'S \"SPORT & SCIENCE ON THE SINO-MONGOLIAN FRONTIER”\n\nThe name of Arthur de Carle Sowerby (1885-1954) is closely connected with the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he was President, 1936-1940. He was a contributor to the Hong Kong Naturalist and the author of numerous books on natural history and sport in northern China. The present note relates to one of his books.\n\nIn the author's introduction to his Sport and science on the Sino-Mongolian frontier (London, Andrew Melrose, 1918), speaking of the six scientific explorations and hunting trips between 1908 and 1912 which provided the subject matter of the book, Sowerby states (p.x):\n\nThe results of the compass traverses have been carefully reduced to a convenient scale (1,000,000), and maps will be found in the cover-pocket at the end of the book.\n\nNo copy of this work, however, has any maps, and the explanation is found in a brief manuscript note, date-stamped May 22 1922, attached to the front fly leaf of the Hankow Club Library copy, now in the University of Hong Kong Libraries. This reads:\n\nDear Dr. Skinner,\n\nWith reference to the maps mentioned in the preface of my book. They were never published — and the publisher failed to delete the notice of them in the preface.\n\nYours faithfully,\n\nA. de C.S.\n\nDr. A. H. Skinner was the librarian of the Hankow Club for many years, and in his preface to the \"China Class\" catalogue, 1922, he acknowledges the advice received regarding book selection on special subjects from, amongst others, Dr. Arthur de C. Sowerby.\n\nHong Kong, June 1979\n\nH. A. RYDINGS",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209360,
        "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-1982",
        "page_number": 17,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "# ADDRESS BY REV. CARL T. SMITH, AT THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, 17TH FEBRUARY 1983\n\nBesides Dr. Topley, the Society has, as you know, also lost the services of Mr. Rydings who has not stood again as Hon. Librarian on account of his expected retirement from his University post later this year.\n\nIt is my privilege to say a few words and to make a presentation on behalf of the Society on this doubly sad occasion. Mr. Rydings, as you all know, has presided over the fortunes of the University of Hong Kong Libraries for twenty years, a period of constant change and expansion. Yet he has found time to be our Hon. Librarian for much of this period, in fact from 1965. It has not been a nominal occupancy, for he has built up our Library Collection and arranged for the books to be available to members on loan. He has corresponded frequently on our behalf with his colleagues abroad, and some of his findings, besides articles of his own, have appeared in the Journal. He has, besides, also produced a comprehensive catalogue for the books, papers and periodicals in our Library, which has appeared in two editions and two supplements, culminating in the edition published towards the end of 1982. An index of the contents of the Journal 1961-70 appeared in 1972, and the second ten-year index will be completed shortly. Tony has also served for a time as Vice President, and with Ian Diamond was largely responsible for the initiative and hard work that resulted in our publication on old buildings that appeared in 1980.\n\nIt will be obvious from this catalogue if I may use the word in another sense of his activities that Tony has given generously of his time and energies to the Society whilst his wise advice on the Council will also be missed. It is with much pleasure, then, that I make this presentation on your behalf. Perhaps I should add that it is of photographic equipment, selected by himself at our request, and that we hope it may enable him, whilst still in Hong Kong, to rescue a few more old buildings from total oblivion!*\n\n* Plate 2.\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nxvii",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209364,
        "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-1982",
        "page_number": 21,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "HON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT\n\nPerhaps the most important occurrence in a relatively eventful year was the donation of over 20 books and several parts of periodicals, nearly all relating to Asia, from the Editor of the well-known Hong Kong monthly ‘Orientations'. This was briefly noted in the President's report at the last annual general meeting, but occurred after the Librarian's report had been prepared. We are extremely grateful for this most useful addition to our collection. Apart from a few volumes which need binding, these gifts have already been added to the shelves.\n\nDuring the year other gifts were received from Dr. James Hayes, who also purchased several volumes on behalf of the Society, including a useful and fairly complete run of the Peking Natural History Bulletin, the complete volumes of which have been bound. Other acquisitions were received on exchange from the University of Hong Kong Libraries, while the regular exchanges with other institutions for our Journal continued.\n\nAn arrangement was made with the Hong Kong Anthropological Society, whereby their small library of material in Chinese and vernaculars, some 20 volumes, has been placed on indefinite loan with our collection, and is included in our catalogue.\n\nIt is fortunate that the space shortage at the Kotewall Library of the Arts Centre, mentioned in the last report, has been overcome. Additional bookcases have been provided, allowing us to spread the books over a greatly increased length of shelving. Even with the increasing accessions noted over the past two years, we will be able to keep our collection in better order for a few years to come.\n\nAs of this date the stock of our collection is as follows:\n\n  \n    Books*\n    Pamphlets\n    Bound periodicals\n  \n  \n    757\n    57\n    686 in 507\n1,321 volumes\n  \n  \n    * including 50 in Chinese\n  \n\nxxi",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210406,
        "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-1985",
        "page_number": 13,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "Treasurer's concurrence. In this connection I wish to report that our former Assistant Secretary, Mrs. Anne Porter, after a year in post has returned to New Zealand for further study. She has been succeeded by Mrs. Rukhshana Daroowala who has quickly got to grips with our problems and is helping us to improve our situation daily.\n\nThe Nixon Scroll and the MacMullen Bills of Lading\n\nThese important items, which have been already in safe deposit since presentation many years ago, have now been presented to the Fung Ping Shan Museum and the University of Hong Kong Libraries respectively, and are now held by these institutions, following a council decision in the matter to place them where they would be useful.\n\nSale of Publications\n\nI have mentioned the need to sell as well as to produce publications. In this regard, I am glad to report that Dr. David Faure has produced a revised list of our publications, copies of which are available to-night. This list is being despatched to overseas members, and to universities and similar institutions with a known interest in Chinese and Far Eastern studies throughout the world, in an endeavour to improve sales, and increase our income.\n\nIncreased Membership\n\nLast year I reported that membership was down. 12 months ago there were 475 members compared with 543 the year before. I am happy to report that, as a result of increased publicity and a membership drive by councillors, the number of members now stands at 530. This comprises 4 Honorary Members, 99 Local Life Members, 297 Local Ordinary Members and 130 Overseas Life and Ordinary Members. The present number of local Ordinary Members is 297 compared with 263 last year and 311 in 1983.\n\nWe have every reason to think that this increase will continue. There is clearly an interest in our programmes, and it is only\n\nxii",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210412,
        "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-1985",
        "page_number": 19,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "HON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1985-1986\n\nThe collection of the Royal Asiatic Society Library comprising 1,551 volumes of books and bound periodicals, 58 pamphlets, 5 photo-albums, 1 roll of microfilm and 1 reel of tape-recording was transferred from the Arts Centre and the University of Hong Kong Library to the Urban Council Kowloon Central Library. The library materials are on permanent loan to the Urban Council Public Libraries and kept in the closed stack of the Kowloon Central Reference Library for home borrowing by members of the Royal Asiatic Society and for public use in the Library after its opening on 9th September 1985. A card catalogue is provided for the ease of the use of the collection.\n\nA small number of new books and periodicals have been added to the collection by exchanges and donations. Twenty-eight monographs and some issues of T'ien Hsia (FF) were purchased during the reporting year.\n\nMarch 1986\n\nxviii\n\nPETER YEUNG Hon. Librarian",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210662,
        "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": 13,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "Publication Stock\n\nHitherto the Society's stock of publications was kept at the University of Hong Kong and latterly at Bethanie, in a section occupied by the University Press. However, in May 1986 we were asked to remove the stock to make way for a rearrangement of the University's accommodation in the building. The impending crisis was averted by the Law Librarian Mrs. Felicity Shaw's kindness in allowing us to hold stock in the basement pending finding another home. This was achieved in July when the Government Archivist, our council member Dr. Thomas Lau, agreed to hold our stock in the Public Records Office. I am most grateful to Felicity (an RAS member) and Thomas for their timely assistance.\n\nThe Library\n\nAs members will recall, in 1985 the Council decided to place our large and valuable collection of books and periodicals on China and the Far East on permanent loan with the Urban Council Libraries, to be housed in the new Kowloon Central Library at Homantin, Kowloon. Wherever one places the collection it is necessary to advertise its existence, in order to ensure that it will be used. The Chief Librarian, Urban Council Libraries, takes various measures to this end periodically. On our part, we have written to some twenty local tertiary educational institutions whose students would wish to know of our library and its contents, enclosing copies of the library catalogue. This publicity, repeated at intervals, is bound to pay off eventually. In the past year, the Chief Librarian reports 18 enquiries, and that 37 books were consulted.\n\nSir Edward Youde\n\nThe Governors of Hong Kong have always been closely associated with our Society; as Patrons of the Hong Kong Branch re-established in 1959-60, and as Presidents of the first China (Hong Kong) Branch in 1847. Our first President was Sir John Davis, scholar, sinologue and a founder member of the parent society in London in 1823. In this connection I have to remind members of the sad event that occurred last December when we lost our current Patron, Sir Edward Youde, who died suddenly whilst on duty.\n\nPage xii\n\n¡",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210666,
        "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": 17,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "HON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT\n\nFOR THE YEAR 1986-1987\n\nThe Society Library has purchased many out-of-print items through Dr. J. Hayes' effort this year. Besides gifts from Dr. Hayes, the Library has received gifts from Mr. David Liu, Mrs. Valerie Garrett, and Mrs. M.L. Winkler. Mr. Walter Greenwood has also donated to the Library his article in manuscript entitled \"John Joseph Francis, citizen of Hong Kong: a biographical note\". The Council is considering including it in the next issue of our Journal. Nearly all the books in the last two years have been catalogued and shelved in the Kowloon Central Library. An additions list is available from the Hon. Librarian on request.\n\nThe Library has donated two items of its duplicates to the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library, and made an offer of permanent loan of McMullen Bills of Lading to the University of Hong Kong Libraries.\n\nRegarding the usage of the Society Library, Mrs. Barbara Luk, the Chief Librarian of the Urban Council Public Libraries wrote: \"As at 28.2.87, there were 18 requests for information, 17 of which were from members of the Society. A total of 37 books were consulted during the year.\" To maximize the use of the Library, Dr. Hayes has sent the Catalogue of the Library to about twenty librarians, with his covering letter giving a brief description of the Library. The Kowloon Central Library is planning to have an exhibition of books from our Collection in the coming September to make the general public more aware of the Library.\n\nThe Council is looking into the question of insurance for books in the Society Library.\n\nMarch 1987\n\nxvi\n\nPeter Yeung\n\nHon. Librarian",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211235,
        "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-1987",
        "page_number": 296,
        "title": "RAS-1987",
        "content_text": "271\n\nWell, over to you again, David.\n\nDavid Faure\n\nWhen I was in England last year I had a look to see what local history societies do, and what sort of material people have in local histories, and I was very impressed. Wherever you go, you find some sort of society with people who are interested in something. Then you have publications that are primarily documentation. You have to walk into a church or the pub, pay your 10p, and you get your little sheet where somebody has written up the history of a village and that sort of thing. You have a whole range of them, you've got scholars interested in broader problems in the field, or trying to fit the local scene into a larger context. You also have the tourist side of things, where people just want to know what that churchyard is all about.\n\nI think we fall far short of that in Hong Kong. I suppose the nearest to a local history society we have in Hong Kong is the Royal Asiatic Society, and our Journals are the only ones I know of that discuss local history as local history. You have a few other places you can publish in. The academic journals abroad are interested in Hong Kong material if you can fit what is said here into a wider theoretical context, so called. Then you also have the publishers that are interested in having a few books on Hong Kong. But we have not got a lot of local materials assembled where people can have a look at them. The conference on Hong Kong History that we had a couple of years ago at the Chinese University was a venue for people interested in the subject, and I suppose we should have more of those. Some sort of publication of source materials would also be useful, and I can't think of a better way of doing it other than by photocopying them and leaving copies in the major libraries.\n\nIt is a new development that the District Boards are now interested in their own history. Quite a few seem to be. They are all compiling these handbooks, describing what happened with the district, and want to include a section on the history of the district. That would be a useful development for our sort of interest.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211296,
        "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": 12,
        "title": "RAS-1988",
        "content_text": "in Rev. Carl Smith's articles reprinted in the 1986 Journal. His accounts of 19th century Cantonese entrepreneurs like Ho A-mei show that Chinese energy and enterprise was fuelled and sustained by the opportunities opened by colonial Hong Kong, and remind us that what we see and marvel at today has also happened yesterday.\n\nWe have another publication nearing completion. This is the book entitled The Turning of the Tide, Religion in China Today which is a collection of papers by authors with first-hand knowledge of the subject and edited by one of our members, Professor Julian Pas of the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.\n\nLibrary\n\nMembers will have noted the greater expenditure on our library in the year's accounts. We are continuing the RAS tradition of building up a fine reference library of books on China. At a time when such books are in increasingly short supply, as reflected in booksellers' rising prices, the financial value of our collection grows from year to year.\n\nSince 1985, the Library has been kept at the Kowloon Central Library, as part of the reference collection there. The advantage of housing it in a public library is that more people can use it, but the disadvantage from our members' viewpoint is that most of them live on Hong Kong Island. Their use of the RAS Collection is undoubtedly limited thereby, especially as the Kowloon Central Library is not located on or near an MTR station. I have therefore discussed with the Chief Librarian, Urban Council Libraries, the possibility of moving it back to the Island when an opportunity occurs. Mrs. Luk tells me that this can be done when the City Hall's Hong Kong Central Library is replaced on the same or another site in the 1990s, and that she is willing to do so at that time. I have written to her subsequently to formalize this request.\n\nAn allied problem is the availability of the collection. Under normal library policies, access to the stacks (the shelves where the books are kept) is very limited. This is the case at Kowloon Central Library, where books other than ours are kept in the same section. On the other hand, the books are ours, and our members should have better access to them, instead of being confined to the catalogue and making a requisition. Mrs.\n\nXi",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211591,
        "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-1989",
        "page_number": 6,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\nHON. TREASURER'S REPORT\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT\n\nARTICLES:\n\nDan Waters\n\nLIBRARIES\n\n138 1937. vii\n\nAR\n\nIn the Steps of Lu Pan: Reminiscences of Building in Hong Kong\n\nK.J.P. Lowe\n\nHong Kong, 26 January 1841: Hoisting the Flag Revisited\n\nKeith Stevens\n\nThe Jade Emperor and his Family, Yu Huang Ta Ti\n\nKeith Stevens - Fukienese Wang Yeh (Ong Ya [Hokkien])\n\nP.H. Munro-Faure\n\nThe Kiukiang Incident of 1927\n\nA.D. Blackburn\n\nHong Kong, December 1941 July 1942\n\nChan Ka-yan\n\nJoss Stick Manufacturing: A Study of a Traditional Industry in Hong Kong\n\nP.H. Hase\n\nCheung Shan Kwu Tsz, An Old Buddhist Nunnery in the New Territories and its Place in Local Society\n\nJ.H. Haan\n\nThalia and Terpsichore on The Yangtze, Survey of Foreign Theatre and Music in Shanghai 1850-1865\n\nFred Dagenais\n\nJohn Fryer's Early Years in China: I. Diary of His Voyage to Hong Kong\n\nChan Wing-hoi\n\nThe Dangs of Kam Tin and Their Jiu Festival\n\nxxi\n\nxxiii\n\n8\n\n18\n\n34\n\n61\n\n77\n\n94\n\n121\n\n158\n\n252\n\n302\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES:\n\nE. Sinn\n\nNotes on the Robert Hart Papers at the University of Hong Kong Library\n\n376\n\nP.H. Hase\n\nA Song from Sha Tau Kok on the 1911 Revolution\n\n382\n\nP.H. Hase\n\nThe Mutual Defence Alliance (Yeuk) of the New Territories\n\n384\n\nP.H. Hase - More on The Man the Emperor Decapitated\n\n388\n\nIssei Tanaka\n\nThe White Tiger\n\n389\n\nKeith Stevens - British Chinese Labour Corps Labourers Buried in England\n\n390\n\nAnthony Siu Kwok-kin\n\nThe History of Hong Kong: From A Village to A City\n\n391\n\nAnthony Siu Kwok-kin\n\nHistorical Records\n\nAnthony Siu Kwok-kin\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nTai Yu Shan from Chinese\n\n394\n\nA Tung Lo Wan\n\n399\n\n400\n\nV",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211598,
        "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-1989",
        "page_number": 13,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "The Library's value to members of our Society, as well as to the general public, lies in the fact that the only other collections of such books in Hong Kong are held by the Universities and are not accessible to the public at large. The RAS Collection is available to Members and, for reference only, to the general public, and since 1985 has been located in the new 12 storey, custom-built Kowloon Central library, opened in that year.\n\nHowever, this location is not convenient for most RAS members, the majority of whom reside on Hong Kong Island. Also, the stacks where our books are held are not directly accessible for free consultation and browsing, because other private collections of books are held in this section of the Library.\n\nIn response to our expressions of concern, the Chief Librarian, Urban Council Libraries has promised that our Collection will return to the Island in the early 1990s, when the present City Hall Library will be expanded or replaced. The books are then expected to be housed in a new reference library where most of them will be kept on open shelves.\n\nIn this joyful expectation, the Council continues to expand the Collection, and has earmarked $10,000 for expenditure in 1990-91.\n\nPublications\n\nAs mentioned in the opening Summary, this year has seen the publication of two items, the 1987 Journal and the book of papers on China and Hong Kong, The Turning of the Tide, Religion in China Today.\n\nI wish to thank the Chinese Temples Committees for a generous grant of half the publication costs from the Chinese General Charities Fund, and Oxford University Press for agreeing to publish in association with the Society and for all help rendered in the final stages of production.\n\nProfessor David Faure had to relinquish the editorship of the Journal when he left Hong Kong to take up a post at the University of Indiana. He had contributed much to the Council and the Society, not only through his impeccable scholarship and hard work, but also through his sterling personal qualities which we all grew to appreciate. Dr. Patrick Hase has taken over the half-completed 1988 Journal which we hope can be published by the Summer, and is putting material together for 1989. We\n\nxii",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211609,
        "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-1989",
        "page_number": 24,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "HONG KONG BRANCH\n\nROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY LIBRARY\n\nREPORT FOR THE YEAR 1989-1990\n\nAs usual, the Society Library has purchased many out-of-print items through Dr. J. Hayes' effort this year. Altogether 215 titles in 251 volumes were processed and are available in the Kowloon Central Library. Among 121 gift titles, 119 titles were donated by Dr. J. Hayes. Other donors were Mr. Phillip Bruce and Mrs. Eveline Caldwell. New additions will be made known to members through the RAS Journal.\n\nArrangement has been made that members may also borrow books from the City Hall Library.\n\nFrom the report by the Urban Council Public Libraries Office, the usage of the Library covering the period from 1.3.89 to 9.3.90 is noted as follows:\n\n1. No. of requests for information\n\n2. No. of books consulted\n\n3. No. of borrowers\n\n4. No. of books checked out\n\n: 90\n\n: 112\n\n: 14\n\n: 21\n\nMr. Wan Yiu Chuen will stand for the election for the Hon. Librarian this year. He is now working in the Special Collections, University of Hong Kong Libraries and has ample experience both in public and academic libraries.\n\n22nd March 1990\n\nxxiii\n\nPETER YEUO Hon. Librarian",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212105,
        "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-1990",
        "page_number": 47,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "24\n\n30\n\nSir George Thomas Staunton, a member of the 1793-94 Macartney Embassy, whose translation of Ch'ing Law was the first published in Britain, had been at pains to emphasize this: Ta Tsing Leu Lee, Being the Fundamental Laws... of the Penal Code of China (London, Cadell and Davies, 1801), p. 185. For its application in practice see the cases translated with commentary in Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris, Law in Imperial China, Exemplified by 190 Ch'ing Dynasty Cases (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967).21 Cited in Corinne K. Hoexter, From Canton to California, The Epic of Chinese Immigration (New York, Four Winds Press, 1976), p. 136.\n\n11 Dr. William Lockhart of the London Missionary Society, writing in 1861, cites the case of the old scholar who so greatly assisted Dr. W.H. Medhurst with his translations and researches. See his The Medical Missionary in China (London, Hurst and Blackett. 2nd edition, 1861), pp. 21-22. \"He was a living concordance of the entire range of Chinese literature. He could find any passage without hesitation, repeat page after page of most of the works, and could easily take up any citation which had been begun in his hearing, and finish it without hesitation. This is not an uncommon thing amongst the educated Chinese, but this man possessed the faculty in a remarkable degree\".\n\n23 Arthur Evans Moule, The Chinese People, A Handbook on China (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1941), p. 262. See also his New China and Old, Personal Recollections and Observations of Thirty Years (London, Seeley and Co., 1891), p. 271.24 Some of the literary material to be found in villages of the Hong Kong region is described in Dr. Patrick Hase's most useful paper. \"Research Materials for Village Studies\", Chapter 4 of Alan Birch, Y.C. Jao and Elizabeth Sinn (eds.) Research Materials for Hong Kong Studies (Hong Kong. Centre of Asian Studies. University of Hong Kong, 1984), pp. 31-46, especially between pp. 32-37.\n\n25\n\n—\n\nBy great good fortune, some of their libraries have survived and are in safe keeping. One of them came from Hoi Pa Village, Tsuen Wan, and had belonged to the builder of the traditional village house there which is now a listed monument. He lived between 1865 and 1937, and after his return from Jamaica engaged in educational pursuits in a literary club and at the Luen Fong School in Hoi Pa Kwan Mun Hau. When what had survived of his library was presented to the Urban Services Department in 1982, it consisted of some 200 books of various kinds, as well as manuscript essays and poems, including some of the famed \"eight-legged essays\" written in preparation for the imperial examination; all providing valuable documentation for the educational, social and intellectual activities of their period. South China Morning Post, 26 May 1982. See also the Chinese press of that date.\n\n16 What Francis C.M. Wei calls the operation of the principle of retributive justice\" featured prominently in Chinese stories. See his The Spirit of Chinese Culture (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947), p. 151. See also Yao Chin-nung, \"The Theme and Structure of the Yuan Drama\", in Tien Hsia Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4 (November 1935), p. 392.27 The Tsuen Wan experience is echoed in the fine description of what it meant to be a village boy in late 19th century Kwangtung, contained in the memoirs of a successful Hawaiian Chinese, born in a village near Macau in 1865. In them, he describes what one might call the \"extra-curricular\" part of education. This included the telling of traditional stories by the family elders and by itinerant minstrels and story-tellers, and through the plays performed by visiting opera troupes, as well as in literary pastimes: Chung Kun Ai, My Seventy Nine Years in Hawaii (1879-1958) (Hong Kong, Cosmorama Pictorial Publisher, 1960), pp. 6, 26-29.\n\n28 Francis C.M. Wei, The Spirit of Chinese Culture (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947) p. 149.\n\n24\n\nFor the former, see the chapter \"Symbol and Tradition\" between pp. 50-75 of Ronald",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212123,
        "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-1990",
        "page_number": 65,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "42\n\ndisasters. the second is for those who died because of plague. The final reason is to thank the benevolent governors Wang Lai-ren and Zhou You-de of the beginning of the Qing dynasty. In my opinion, all these reasons can be integrated into the first one.\n\n(d) Chan Wing-hoi \"The Tangs of Kam Tin and their Jiu festival\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 29 (1989) 302-375, a rich and detailed account of the lineage, its temples and villages, and the festival which draws them together.\n\nDr. Faure gradually switched his interest to the Pearl River Delta while Prof. Tanaka, as I was told, is now looking at Sichuan province. Talk on publishing a book on Hong Kong Jiao festivals has been going on for years by members of the \"Research Circle of the Regional Society of Southern China''. In 1990, the editorial board of the society set up a schedule to compile a book focusing on the Jiao festival. It is expected that papers on various aspects will be completed by the end of April 1991. (Correspondence from the society dated 28.12.1990)\n\nSchipper, Kristofer M., \"The Written Memorial in Taoist Ceremonies\" in Wolf, Arthur P. (ed.) Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 324,\n\nFor example, according to Chan Wing-hoi, villagers of Shek O celebrated their 16th Jiao in 1986 (Chan, 78). The Dengs in Kam Tin claimed to have celebrated their Jiao since 1684 (Tanaka, 918).\n\nSee for instance Basel Mission Archives, doct. Al-6, No. 51 (1869), and doct. Al-7, No. 51 (1870) and Der Evangelische Heidenbote, July 1867, in which a missionary describes how he was forced to go to the Magistrate to get his support before he could avoid having to pay his share of the Jiao expenses. All these cases are from Hsin An County. The Sha Tin poem will, it is hoped, shortly be published by Dr. P.H. Hase.\n\nThese two series are part of the 15 series of historical documents collected by Dr. D. Faure and others in the New Territories. Copies of the collections are kept in the libraries of CUHK, Hong Kong University, Sha Tin Regional Council Library, and Institute of Oriental Culture, Tokyo University.\n\n31\n\nTanaka Chugoku no Sozoku to Engeki [Lineage and Theatre in China] (Tokyo Univ. Press 1985), 608. Jiao festivals celebrated by the powerful communities in Hong Kong like Kam Tin, Ha Tsuen, Lung Yeuk Tau etc., were all performed by the Zhengyi Taoist group, led first by the late Master Lin Pei and now by Master Chan Kau. Another Zhengyi Taoist group is led by Master Chan Wah. However, many Taoist priests work for both groups. There are also other Taoist groups who performed for the Jiao festivals, like a Cantonese group which performed for Ho Chung and a Heklo group for Cheung Chau. In 1983, four out of five Jiao festivals were performed by monastery Taoists. It is not clear whether it was because of tradition or out of economic reasons. A comparison of the two Taoist groups has yet to be made.\n\n14 Choi Chi-cheung **Sho matsuri no jinmei risuto ni mirareru shinzoku ban'i” [Kinship as seen in the name lists of Jiao festival] Bunka Jinnú Gaku 5 (1988): 131, table L. 35 **Shinshi men\" [Section of Believers] in Fanling Wenxian (Historical Literature of Fanling) vol. 8. This brief account records details of the arrangement of the Jiao area, including the contents of couplets, names of deities invited, location and direction of matshed stages, and the sacrifices prepared etc.. See n. 32 for the depositories of Fanling Wenxian.\n\n36 See (1972) Lin Chuan [Lam Tsuen] Xiang Taiping Qingjiao huiyi jilubu in Dapu [Tai Po] Wenzian [Historical Literature of Tai Po] vol. 1. (see n. 32 for depositories)\n\n37 Tanaka Issei's three books, all published by the Tokyo Univ. Press are: Chugoku Saishi Engeki Kenkyu [Ritual Theatres in China] (1981), Chugoku no Sozoku to Engeki [Lineage and Theatre in China) (1985), and Chugoku Kyoson Saishi Kenkyu: Chihogeki",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212506,
        "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-1991",
        "page_number": 60,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "40\n\nPRIVATE PATRONAGE OF SCHOLARSHIP AND LEARNING DURING THE MID-QING: \n\nRUAN YUAN AND THE SCHOLARS AROUND HIM* \n\nWEI PEH T'I \n\nThis paper is an initial essay towards a biographical study of Ruan Yuan (1764-1849), a major scholar-official and patron of scholars of the Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns. I hope that by examining the life and work of a competent and respected scholar-official of this era, 'the prime exemplars of any age'.1 I may be able to bring into focus the critical problems and atmosphere of early 19th century China, the two score or so years immediately preceding the Opium War after which traditional Chinese institutions and values began to change. I have been fortunate in being able to make use of the extant Qing archival documents and Ruan Yuan's own publications for this research.\n\nRuan Yuan left considerable literary remains. I have located 75 titles, including a number of monumental publications that carry his name as author, compiler or editor. There are also prefaces he wrote for his own and other scholars' works, indicating that at least he had known the content of them before publication. Impressive indeed as these achievements were, questions about Ruan Yuan's actual efforts arise.\n\n* I would like to thank the following libraries for allowing me access to their valuable collections in preparing this paper: Library of the National Palace Museum, the National Taiwan University libraries; the National Central Library; the Fu Ssu-nien Library of the Academia Sinica; The Library of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Hong Kong Libraries; the Rare Book Collection of the Beijing Library; the Oriental Manuscripts Collection and the Main Collection of the British Library, the Harvard-Yenching Library of Harvard University; the Gest Library of Princeton University; the Library of Congress; the New York Public Library; and Qing letters from the collection of the late Dr Wang Shih-chieh. I am also grateful to the following individuals for their help and comments on an earlier draft of this paper: Chang Ling-sheng, Ch'ang Pe-te, Chuang Chi-fa, Wang Ching-hung, Wang P'u and Wu Che-fu of the National Palace Museum (Taipei), Wang Junyi and Huang Aiping of the People's University; Ji Longwei of Yangzhou Teachers' College; Feng Erkang of Nankai University; Beatrice S. Bartlett, Iona Crook and Stephen Shott of Yale University; F.W. Mote of Princeton University; Elizabeth Sinn, Maureen Sabine and Shih Hsio-yen of the University of Hong Kong; and Deng Linyu and Xu Xiaohui of the Chinese International School of Hong Kong. Of course, they are not responsible for the errors contained in this paper. My gratitude also goes to the Department of History and Centre of Asian Studies of the University of Hong Kong. I have opted to use pinyin to accommodate a particular Chinese software program, but have left the Wade-Giles transliteration in quotations.\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213351,
        "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": 173,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "156\n\nintellectual and historical traditions. Thus they were able to push the study of Hong Kong history to new frontiers.\n\nThe Hong Kong History Project, Chinese University of Hong Kong\n\nResearch was pursued with great energy at the Chinese University, and a history project its members began in 1978 may be said to have marked a turning point in the development of the study of local history.\n\nAimed at saving whatever historical information that might still be found, the Project included Ng Lun Ngai-ha, Kwan Li-hung, David Faure, Bernard Luk, Tam Yu-yim and Barbara Ward, and teams of students. They began by gathering historical inscriptions in temples and ancestral halls, and then went on to interviewing villagers for what they remembered of the villages. Villagers were also asked to come forward with whatever documents they had. Soon, gathering documentary materials and interviewing became complementary. The research teams worked on one district at a time, first concentrating on Sha Tin and Sai Kung, then Lam Tsuen and in 1982, Tsuen Wan, though members would approach other villages in the New Territories whenever the opportunity arose. Their search yielded rich fruits because they cast their nets wide - they sought materials that earlier researchers had not considered relevant. Thus documents such as village regulations, land deeds and accounts, ritual and ceremonial texts, scholars' handbooks, textbooks and almanacs, clan records and so forth were gathered, and these were able to throw new light on important, and yet hitherto neglected, aspects of village life - daily life, farming and subsistence, sickness and death, family life, marketing, intervillage organizations, internal village organization, \n\n22\n\nThe project must have seemed like a massive raid by scholars into the New Territories, and its benefit to other scholars is incalculable. Many of the manuscripts and books were deposited in public libraries. Inscriptions copied were published in three volumes as Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, now standard reference. The wealth in information supplied by these inscriptions is overwhelming, and Maurice Freedman noted that, together with land deeds, genealogies and other records, they formed the basic sources for an understanding of the New Territories. The exercise was all the more timely since, in face of Hong Kong's rapid development, it was possible that many of the inscriptions might have been lost had the project not been undertaken at that time. 24",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213360,
        "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": 182,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "165\n\nHong Kong history is to make any relevant material collector's items. Old postcards, for instance, which might have been bought for several dollars a few years ago, are now selling for ten, twenty times the price. New collectors are entering the market, and no doubt 1997 has much to do with heating up the collectors' market for 'Things Hong Kong'. The effect is that items which might have gone to the museums and libraries where serious researchers have access, are now in private collectors' hands and so unlikely to be used for research.\n\nMaybe, in this respect too, the local historian is the victim of his own success.\n\n## Conclusion\n\nIt is clear that the study of local history in Hong Kong, built upon earlier foundations, has made great progress since the 1970s. In the meantime, government and semi-government bodies have contributed towards promoting interest and awareness in local history and heritage conservation. To a generation born in Hong Kong and curious about its own history, these developments have been timely. Thus we are witnessing a period of unprecedented activity in promotion and research, and ready funding. In turn, the sudden surge in public demand is creating bottlenecks. There is no quick or easy solution to the problem, and it will take a few years for the universities, and perhaps the museums, to train a sufficient number of researchers to keep up with popular demand. At the same time, we should not lose sight of the need to continue serious research to ensure that quality and depth are not sacrificed for popularity.\n\n## NOTES\n\nThe author is grateful to the Japan Foundation for funding part of the research for this paper, which is a slight modification of one presented at the 14th Conference of the International Association of Historians of Asia, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 20-24th May, 1996, entitled “The Study of Local History in Hong Kong: Progress and Problems”.\n\n2\n\nLan Tien-wei dates the beginning of the study of Hong Kong history to the 1910s when the former Hanlin scholar Chen Botao revised the Dongguan Local Gazetteer. In this case, of course, Hong Kong was only a minor part of the study. In the 1920s and 1930s, some archaeologists began excavations in the Hong Kong region, but since prehistoric archaeology is a different branch of knowledge with techniques of its own, it will be excluded from this paper (See Lan Tien-wei, “Hong Kong Studies in the Past Seventy years” (in Chinese), Chu...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213945,
        "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": 15,
        "title": "RAS-1997",
        "content_text": "Publications\n\nOver the year Peter Halliday, our Honorary Editor, has continued to make progress. During 1997-8, volumes 34 (1994) and 35 (1995) of our Journals have been published. It means if two more Journals can be published over the coming year we have caught up with what was a sizeable backlog. In addition, after special software was prepared by staff at the City Hall Library, Dr Lauren Pfister and his assistants, at the Baptist University, have started work preparing a comprehensive index for all our journals. We are grateful to all of them.\n\nMeanwhile, Dr Patrick Hase has put in considerable time and effort editing chapters submitted by a small number of RAS members complemented by photographs taken by members of the Cathay Camera Club. After Brian Pierce left Hong Kong the leadership of the photographic team for our project was taken over by Charles Slater. The role has now been filled by Ian Masterton. Again we thank everyone for all they have done. Our new book, about Yau Ma Tei which should come out in mid 1998 will form a companion volume to Beyond the Metropolis: Villages in Hong Kong which we published in late 1995.\n\nOur Branch has a large collection of photographs and we are grateful to Tim Ko for working his way through these with the possibility of publishing a selection of them at some stage in the future.\n\nEfforts were made during the year to increase sales of our publications. We have already started targeting academic institutions in North America and community and school libraries in Hong Kong.\n\nOur Newsletter continues to be an important link between the Council and Branch members. We have to thank Claire Hockaday, Sarah Parnell and Geoffrey Roper for preparing this Newsletter, over the past year, which is gradually increasing in size. Our Branch has a number of members among its ranks who are authors and this year, again, some of them have published. Details of these publications have appeared in our Newsletter. We are now prepared to accept advertisements in our Newsletter from outsiders and a schedule of charges has been drawn up.\n\nxiv\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213965,
        "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": 34,
        "title": "RAS-1997",
        "content_text": "HON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT\n\nAs of 15 March 1998, the library collection had increased to 3,429 volumes. A total of 240 volumes were added during the year. There was a reduction of books purchased by Dr. James Hayes from Australia. However, a large donation was received from the Command Library (British Armed Forces Library), amounting to around 60 books. Most of these books are about Hong Kong, China and Southeast Asia. Donations of books were also received from Dr. Gillian Bickley, Dr. James Hayes, Dr. Li Shu-fan, Mrs. Patricia Lim, Mr. Liang Xi-hua, Dr. Elizabeth Sinn, Dr. Anthony Siu, and The Hong Kong Archaeology Society.\n\nMembers of the Royal Asiatic Society visited the Hong Kong Collection of the University of Hong Kong Libraries together with the Hong Kong University Museum on 22 November 1997. The comprehensive collection of books, records, newspapers, microfilms and other documents is renowned as the best collection relating to Hong Kong in the territory. The group was given a guided tour by the curator of the Special Collections, Mr Y.C. Wan. Mr. Wan also gave a brief history of the unique collections in the Rare Book Room. Members were particularly interested in the antique maps of Hong Kong and China.\n\nTo help publicise and promote the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, as part of the University of Hong Kong Libraries' digital project, it was suggested that selected articles of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society could be mounted on the HKU Libraries web server for wider access. The proposal is still under consideration because of copyright concern. Consent of the authors is required to launch the project.\n\nAs of November 1997, the RAS Collection is available for searching on the Internet (http://www.uc.gov.hk/ucpl) via the On-line Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) of the Provisional Urban Council Public Libraries. Users may search the catalogue by author, title, subject, and/or keywords. The RAS collection is one of the special collections in the City Hall Library.\n\nxxxiii",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214601,
        "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": 16,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "members of the Cathay Camera Club. A special vote of thanks must go to Iain Masterton and Charles Slater, who as both RAS and Cathay members also served, during different periods, as photographic co-ordinator. This book has made a contribution to local literature and will be read and referred to for many years to come. It is available in all good bookstores.\n\nFaced with the task of making sure a large membership keeps in touch, our lively Newsletter comes hot off the press every two months. Although a few of us feed in information its preparation is done almost entirely by our energetic Assistant Secretary, Sarah Parnell.\n\nWe also congratulate our many members who have published books, papers or articles during the past year on their own account. A special mention, however, must be made of Dr Patrick Hase's splendid paper entitled, 'The Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong Branch) and its Journal'. This article came out in The Journal of Resources for Hong Kong Studies which was produced by the University of Hong Kong Libraries, volume no.9.\n\nActivities\n\nIt has not infrequently been said that the backbone of our Branch is the activities we provide and many join because, during a brief stay in Hong Kong, they wish to learn something about local history, customs and culture. It has jokingly been said, however, that you cannot do this, and learn to speak the language, on a diet of western food. The answer to this must be that, during the course of the year, members do have the opportunity to share a few meals together.\n\nDuring the past year 12 lectures, eight Hong Kong visits and two excursions to the China Mainland were conducted. This is an impressive number. A wide range of topics was covered as can be seen from Appendices A and B of this report. A large number of speakers are named on these lists and I take this opportunity to thank them all, together with the leaders and organisers of tours and anyone else who assisted us with our activities in any way. We are pleased that many of you have been able to accept our invitations and have joined us for dinner this evening.\n\nXV",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214620,
        "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": 35,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY HONG KONG BRANCH LIBRARY REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1999/2000\n\nAs of 1 March 2000, the library collection had increased to 3,950 volumes. A total of 246 volumes were added during the year. Donations of books were received from Mr. Solomon Bard, Mr. Rowan Callick, Dr. Edward C. Harris, Dr. Patrick Hase, Dr. James Hayes, Mrs. May Holdsworth, Mr. David Mahoney, Mr. Robert Nield, Mr. Geoffrey Roper, Dr. Dan Waters, Hong Kong Museum of History, and Hong Kong Public Records Office.\n\nFollowing the success of the book, Beyond the Metropolis: Villages in Hong Kong, the Society's new book: In the Heart of the Metropolis: Yau Ma Tei and Its People, represents another breakthrough and was successfully launched in December 1999 at the Foreign Correspondent's Club. Edited by Dr. Patrick Hase, the book consists of photographs by members of the Cathay Camera Club and portrays Yau Ma Tei as the “economic and social heart of West Kowloon, the heart of 'real' Hong Kong in recent decades.”\n\nTo promote the Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong Branch), an exhibition of over 55 photographs extracted from the archives of the Society, illustrating domestic, industrial and commercial buildings and interesting street scenes in Sheung Wan and Western District in the 1960's, was held at the foyer of the University of Hong Kong Libraries from 3-21 January 2000. These photographs were supplemented by two old maps and a few air photos from the HKU Map Library as well as some books and pamphlets from the Main Library to provide more detailed illustration in some areas. The result was very promising; there were questions and emails expressing interest in the activities of the Society. Library users were particularly enticed by the photographs since some of them or their relatives/friends were residents in the surrounding area prior to redevelopment in the mid-1970's. The book: Hong Kong Going and Gone, which was compiled from part of the photographic survey, became a high-demand item, both for research in architectural structure as well as Hong Kong studies in the 1960's. 25 copies were sold, 14 new members were recruited, and more were recorded later.\n\nInvestigation was made into the possibility of setting up an exhibition\n\nxxxiv",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
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    {
        "id": 214906,
        "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": 2,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "JOURNAL OF\n\nTHE HONG KONG BRANCH\n\nOF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY\n\nUNIVERSITY\n\nOF\n\nHONG\n\nLIBRARIES\n\nKONG\n\n*\n\nVol. 40, 2000\n\nTHE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL\n\nASIATIC SOCIETY\n\n2001\n\ni",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214922,
        "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": 18,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "They contain a wealth of observations and well-researched material written by both RAS members and non-members who have frequently lived and worked close to their subjects for considerable periods. Such studies often contrast with those of other scholars who, because of lack of personal contact through no fault of their own, must distance themselves from their subjects and rely largely on secondary sources. I should like to thank our present Honorary Editor, Dr Peter Halliday. Nevertheless we must not forget earlier editors such as Drs Patrick Hase, James Hayes, David Faure and their predecessors, who put in countless hours in honorary capacities. Do you possess any special knowledge or expertise? Do you have something important to say regarding Hong Kong's past? If so, we look forward to reading your contribution.\n\nOver the past year selected papers and articles from our Journals have been digitised and placed on the Hong Kong University Libraries Homepage. The Home Page includes a search engine thus obviating the need for an index. We are grateful to the University for giving us the opportunity to co-operate with them on this meaningful project.\n\nOur publications continue to attract attention and sell to scholars and discerning readers around the world. Over the past year a number of bodies have requested permission to quote from, or to display, photographs from our last book, In the Heart of the Metropolis: Yaumatei and its People. Such requests are normally granted provided due acknowledgement is given. Our bimonthly Newsletter continues to be read avidly, RAS member Robin Bridge wrote: 'My thanks to all those who have researched and compiled such an informative Newsletter. Delighted to receive it e-mail, too.' While a few of us have fed in information over the past year the Newsletter was prepared, firstly, by Sarah Parnell and, for the second part of the year, by her successor, Mary Painter.\n\nWe again congratulate our members who have published in their own right over the past year. Because of numbers we are unable to name them individually. Other than in special cases we try to refrain from showing favouritism to individual authors. Nevertheless any member who publishes may, if he or she wishes, have their work mentioned in our Newsletter. Writing is, some contend, a form of therapy. One sometimes wonders how those who do not write manage\n\nxvii",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215151,
        "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": 247,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "206\n\nIn spite of the tentative conclusions above, it is interesting that a few RAS members have put such letters after their names in order to give themselves a certain, special, identification. It meant something to them. They obviously took pride, as we all do, in being members of our Society.\n\nIf any reader can add anything to the above brief notes their contribution would be welcome.\n\n[Nice try, Dan-Ed.]\n\n1 Transactions of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1847, Hong Kong University Libraries Special Collection.\n\n2 Ball MRAS, J. Dyer, Things Chinese or, Notes Connected with China, Graham Brash, 1903.\n\nEdkins, J., Opium: Historical Note, or the Poppy in China, Shanghai, American Presbyterian Mission Press (1898).\n\nLetter from Adrian Thomas, Secretary, Royal Asiatic Society, London (20 March 2001).\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society its History and Treasures, Eds. Stuart Simmonds and Simon Digby, EJ Brill for the RAS (London, 1979): C. F. Beckingham's history of the RAS appears on pp. 1-77.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215225,
        "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": 2,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "JOURNAL OF\n\nTHE HONG KONG BRANCH\n\nOF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY\n\nUNIVERSITY\n\n大\n\nOF\n\nTHE\n\nHONG\n\nKONG\n\nLIBRARIES\n\n10 SEP 2003\n\nVol. 41, 2001\n\nTHE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL\n\nASIATIC SOCIETY\n\n2002\n\ni",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215244,
        "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": 21,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "relatively few take part in our various activities. Council will continue to keep this aspect of our membership under review. Council would like to target its action towards encouraging local Chinese in certain particular occupations and positions to become members, and will consider further ways of achieving this.\n\nTo some degree, our shortage of local Chinese members is a reflection of our poor numbers of Student Members. If we could succeed in getting more students to become Student Members there would be a good chance that they would retain membership after they left full-time education. Council has discussed ways of improving the numbers of Student Members, and will consider the issue again later.\n\nCouncil is also aware that the number of Institutional Members is unsatisfactory. We would like the Journal to be available in every University which has a School of Chinese or Oriental Studies, but, to date, we are very far indeed from achieving this. Even within Hong Kong sets of the Journal are not yet available in all our tertiary institutions, nor in more than one of our Public Libraries. Various possibilities as to how to improve the position have been considered, and Council will continue to look into the matter. One possibility under active consideration is a new category of membership - Honorary Institutional Membership - which would make it easier for the Society to send sets of the Journal to appropriate tertiary institutions on a reciprocal or zero-cost basis where this seems appropriate.\n\nIncome\n\nOur Honorary Treasurer will shortly give his Report on the finances of the Society, and I do not want to say anything here which he will discuss later in greater detail, and, doubtless, greater accuracy. However, I must say that the overall position of our finances at the end of last year was generally satisfactory. The Society is in a sound financial state. We made a very small net deficit for the year (about half of one per cent of our total expenditure), but our cash income from all sources is holding up well. Council does not consider that there is any need at this point in time to seek an increase in our Membership Subscriptions, although Council reserves the right to seek such an increase next year, should the financial position during the year make this prudent.\n\nXVIII",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215246,
        "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": 23,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "It is likely that before the next AGM a full-scale donation drive will have been begun: members will, of course, be kept fully in the picture. In the meantime, preliminary discussions with the University of Hong Kong Press on the possibilities of establishing a series of monographs, funded by the Fund, and possibly to be called the \"Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong, Local History Series\" have shown considerable promise. Even though the Fund is not yet formally in being, donations of a little under $2,000 have already been made to it, which is a hopeful sign. Please watch this space for further details!\n\nLibrary\n\nOur Hon. Librarian will shortly give a Report on the work of the Library of the Society for the year, and I do not wish to anticipate what is in that Report. However, I must mention the move of the Library from its previous crowded location in the City Hall to far more spacious and satisfactory premises at the new Central Library in Causeway Bay, since this is one of the most important achievements of the Society during the last year. The Society has been looking forward to this move for several years. Now our books are housed in a fine space. They have all been treated with appropriate preservation measures. Our rare and valuable books are housed separately in a secure room. Now the Library is kept in a way appropriate to its status as one of the most important research libraries in Hong Kong.\n\nI am glad that so many members of the Society took advantage of the two visits the Society arranged to see the Library in its new setting. As you no doubt are aware, the books in the Society's Library are on permanent loan to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. They remain ours, however. They are available to any member of the public to read, but only in the Reference Library of the Central Library. Members of the Society, however, who present their Membership Cards, can borrow our books (other than the rare and valuable ones). Furthermore, members may go into the stacks and work there (a small desk for the use of members has been provided). The Library is an important asset, and I am particularly glad to be able to report on its present flourishing and satisfactory situation.\n\nCouncil is anxious to continue to expand the Library, and thus to continue its development as a major research source for the study of\n\nPage XX",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215249,
        "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": 26,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "decade, publication of the Journal has always been a year at least behind schedule - in some years three or four years behind. This year, with the publication of Volumes 39 and 40, we have at last come back on schedule, and are now completely up-to-date.\n\nOn this issue, I should explain that Volume 40 bears the date \"2000\". This is short for \"2000-2001\". The Journal for any year should be published after the AGM at which the Financial Accounts for the year in question, and the President's Report covering that year, are presented to Members. Thus Volume 40, for 2000-2001, could only have been published after the 2001 AGM. Volume 41, for 2001-2002, can similarly only be published after this AGM. It is Council's policy that any Volume should be published sufficiently soon after the AGM so that it is in members' hands before the next AGM. Volume 40, therefore, should have been published, as it in fact was, after the 2001 AGM, and be in members' hands before today's AGM, which it was as well. So we are up to date at last! My thanks go to our hard-working Hon. Editor (Journals), Dr Peter Halliday, for having achieved this.\n\nEditing the Journal is no easy task, especially as it is done entirely on a voluntary basis, and takes up an immense amount of time. It is true that computerisation has made the job a little easier than when the Hon. Editor had to deal with a mass of manuscripts in various degrees of illegible handwriting, but it is still hugely time-consuming and problematic.\n\nThe Journal is the premier academic periodical for Hong Kong studies, and, as such, gives the Society an important place within the academic community, in both Hong Kong and overseas. As I have mentioned above, Council would like to see more sets of the Journal in more academic libraries, and is actively considering how best to achieve this. I hope to be able to report more on this issue in next year's Report.\n\nIn the meantime, as Dr. Waters mentioned last year, we hope soon to have a contents-list for the Journal with some full texts in an on-line web-site format. We had, indeed, expected this to be available well before now, but Hong Kong University Libraries, through whom this project is being undertaken, found their contractor unsatisfactory, and eventually the contractor had to be replaced. A new, and, hopefully more satisfactory contractor is now in place, and Council hopes that\n\nxxiii",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215737,
        "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": 36,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "each case this has been followed by sending a complete set of our Journals to the institution in question. As a result of this initiative, the number of Institutional Members of the Society has increased during the year from 9 to 21. We are continuing to keep this development in the front of our minds, and more new Honorary Institutional Members are likely to be approved during this next year. We hope in particular to agree arrangements which will allow us to get sets of our Journal into libraries in Peking and Canton. We are also currently looking into ways to increase the number of University Libraries with sets of the Journal, in Europe, America, and East Asia, and I hope to be able to give a full report on this next year.\n\nWe have also agreed with the Leisure and Cultural Services Department of the Hong Kong Government to improve the holdings of the Journal in the Public Library Service of Hong Kong. We found when we investigated the issue, that there were eight sets of the Journal in the Public Library Service in Hong Kong, but that not even one of the sets was complete, and several were missing up to half the volumes. All the missing volumes have now been replaced at the Society's expense, and agreement with the Libraries Service reached so that every major public library now has a complete set. There are two sets in our library within the Central Library at Causeway Bay, and a third set in the public Reference Library of the Central Library, and sets in all the Regional Libraries (City Hall, Kowloon, Sha Tin, Tsuen Wan and Tuen Mun).\n\nThe daughter of one of our Members who died recently has returned his set of the Journals to us as a donation, together with a large number of the Hong Kong Government Annual Reports. This very welcome and generous donation has allowed us to prepare another set of Journals which will, in due course, be donated to another library in Hong Kong. We are currently looking at possible sites for this set, in the context of an investigation into the holdings of the Journal in the libraries of Hong Kong's tertiary institutions, and in other scholarly libraries here. I hope to be able to make a further report on this issue next year.\n\nStructured Membership Drive\n\nLast year I also announced an initiative to seek to encourage Membership among selected target groups, particularly students of our\n\nxxvii",
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    {
        "id": 215759,
        "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": 58,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY LIBRARY\n\nREPORT FOR THE YEAR 2002/2003\n\nAs of 1 March 2003, the Library collection had increased to 4,856 volumes. A total of 476 volumes were added during the year. The number of additions this year is double that of last year, which was 247 volumes. Donations of books were received from Mrs Anna Baker, Mrs Lorna Christofis, Mrs Valery Garrett, Mr Michael Guilford, Mrs Patricia Lim, Mrs Ann Marden, and Dr Dan Waters. We would like to thank all our donors and welcome future contributions of old and rare books or journals. The new additions are treasures for our Library.\n\nOur Library has also been enriched by some very valuable and interesting gifts from a number of societies and institutions. Dr Patrick Hase brought back, from his visit to Shanghai Library, a superb copy of a two-volume reproduction of a series of nineteenth century Chinese woodcuts from Shanghai; the University Museum and Art Gallery of the University of Hong Kong sent us a beautiful booklet on The Lugard Tribute; the Siam Society contributed 34 issues of the National History Bulletin: the Cultural Institute of the Macao SAR Government contributed 91 issues of the Review of Culture; and the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities sent us their Bulletin as part of the newly established exchange programme.\n\nWith assistance from the Hong Kong Central Library, processing of the Arnold Graham Collection was finally completed. The Collection was donated by the late Arnold Graham in 1995 and sent to the City Hall Public Library directly without being catalogued. To facilitate access to this collection, efforts were made to process these materials soon after the move to the Central Library in 2001. About 77% of the records were successfully matched against University of Hong Kong Libraries' records and the Hon. Librarian searched or did original cataloguing for the remaining titles. The Collection comprises a total of 423 volumes, with 361 volumes in English and 62 in Chinese. These are shelved as a separate section in the Rare Book Room and can now be searched through the online catalogue of the Hong Kong Central Library, RAS Collection.\n\nA survey conducted last year on the Journal of the Hong Kong\n\nxlix",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 215924,
        "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": 223,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "157\n\nIn Hase's opinion, it would be great to have Sinn as president - the first Chinese president and perhaps help in attracting more Chinese members.\n\n\"I am not sure if a Chinese president would attract more Chinese members. In any case, for me, it doesn't make that much difference whether our members are Chinese or not,\" said Sinn. \"We have four Chinese on the Council. It's hard to find Chinese to serve on the Council. In Hong Kong, getting people to do things that don't pay is very difficult. It takes a lot of dedication.\"\n\nThe RAS is now on-line - www.royalasiaticsociety.org.hk thanks to one of the new young Chinese recruits, Moody Tang, a student in applied Chinese studies majoring in Chinese for mass media at the City University of Hong Kong. You can read about the history of the RAS, get information on upcoming events and read the latest President's Report on-line. Discussions are in place about putting the journals on-line.\n\nIn the next few months, selected articles will be published on-line as part of a joint project with the University of Hong Kong Libraries. A list of all the volumes of the Journal and their contents will also be available.\n\nUnlike Smith and Hase, Sinn does not feel there is any problem with having the Royal in the name. It is part of the tradition. Sinn says the Royal doesn't mean an allegiance to the crown, as the Hong Kong branch is independent of the mother society in England.\n\n\"We are not a snobbish society, so people don't have to join 'to be seen' as members. The intellectual curiosity of members is a great attraction for me. Some of the Council members have become best friends.\n\n\"Dan Waters is really more of a Hong Kong person than lots of local people. I think this is where the word 'expatriate' gets ambiguous. The average RAS member knows more about Hong Kong than other Hong Kong people.\"\n\nI reflect on this for a moment, and realise I have to agree. Much to",
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    {
        "id": 216132,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-2002",
        "page_number": 431,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "365\n\nmicroforms, audiovisual materials, and CD-ROMs, covering oriental subjects and cultures, in varied languages, and has become a fine reference source. Some of the books provide eye-witness accounts of China over the past years. Many of these are old and out of print, available to the public only in this Library.\n\nThe Society has also established exchange programmes with many learned societies all over the world. The Journal forms the basis of the Library and sufficient numbers are printed for exchange. The Journal has a book review section which helps to bring in a useful nucleus of publications. Of high academic standards and interest, there has been an increasing demand for it from members and scholars overseas. The Collection is growing steadily as a result of the many useful exchanges established with other institutions.\n\nCollection access\n\nPost-1900 materials are available for loan. For security and preservation of rare and valuable materials, pre-1900 materials (with selected rare post-1900 materials) which might be difficult to replace are only for in-house use. The collection is also open to the academic community, students and the general public as it is the intention of the Society to aid scholarly research on China and the Far East.\n\nBibliographic aids\n\nTo facilitate the use of the Society's Journal, Mr. H.A. Rydings compiled two indexes, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Index to Vols. 1-10 (1961-1970) and Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Index to Vols. 11 - 20 (1971-1980), in 1972 and 1983 respectively. These two indexes combine, in one alphabetical sequence, entries for authors and subjects of articles in the 20 volumes of the Journal and cover the contents of the annual Journal from 1961-1970 and 1971-1980.\n\nIn addition, the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society is one of the journals enlisted in the University of Hong Kong Libraries' digital project on Hong Kong Journals Online which contains scholarly journals published in Hong Kong. This database is open to access worldwide and allows browsing of table of contents",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216152,
        "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": 451,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "385\n\nINTRODUCING THE CONSERVATION SECTION OF THE HONG KONG GOVERNMENT\n\nPAUL HARRISON1\n\nI am sure most members of HKBRAS regularly attend Hong Kong's museums and libraries. They might, however, not be familiar with all the work that goes on behind the scenes to make these institutions effective.\n\nOne group of specialists are the conservators. The author is employed as a conservator and is a life member of the HKBRAS. He is one of a team of thirty-five specialists who work at laboratories at the Museums of Art, Heritage and History, the Film Archive and the Central Library. These are further divided into ten specialist teams, to work on the many varied materials that these institutions collect. There is another similar team at the Public Records Office to conserve the Government's archives.\n\nA question that the author is often asked is 'What did you study to be able to do this?' The answer is that he has a B.Sc. in Archaeological Conservation, and an M.Sc. in Ancient Metal Working Techniques from University College London, and, accordingly, works in the Metals team. The other teams are Archaeology, Ceramics/Stone, Central Library, Film Archive, Historical Documents, Organic Materials, Paper, Photographs and Textiles/Natural History.\n\nThe other, curatorial, members of the section are locally employed chemistry graduates who after serving an apprenticeship at a museum head overseas to study a conservation discipline. Previously they all went to UCL too. Now people have been to Canberra University, Australia; the Canadian Conservation Institute, Rochester, New York, USA for Film Conservation; De Montfort University, Lincoln, England, and Southampton University for textile conservation; and Camberwell, London to study paper conservation. But training is a life-long experience and experienced conservators are sent on short training courses, overseas, to expand the skills base of the section.\n\nAnother question that I sometimes get is 'Can you do carbon-14 dating?'",
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    {
        "id": 216243,
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        "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-2003",
        "page_number": 2,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "2125360\n\nUNIVERSITY\n\nOF\n\nJOURNAL OF\n\n*\n\nHONO\n\nLIBRARIES\n\nKONG\n\n*\n\n(i 5 JUL 2005\n\nTHE HONG KONG BRANCH\n\nOF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY\n\nVol. 43, 2003\n\nTHE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE\n\nROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY\n\n2003\n\ni",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216260,
        "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-2003",
        "page_number": 19,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "in Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Seoul appeared in Volume 41 of the Journal (liz_teather@hotmail.com).\n\nDan Waters, Ph.D., is a former Assistant Director of Education with the Hong Kong Government and a noted Sinophile and historian. He is a Past-President of HKBRAS and has contributed prolifically to the annual Journal (benefit@netvigator.com).\n\nDeidre Wildy, is a Librarian at Queen's University Belfast. She is the Subject Librarian for the School of History and is responsible for the Library Special Collections. Though her career has been in academic libraries for the most part, she was Project Manager for the Northern Ireland Publications Resource (www.nibooks.org) and also worked with RASCAL a web-based directory of research and special collections in Northern Ireland (www.rascal.ac.uk). Her interests lie in research support and the exploitation of new technologies to provide access to special collections materials. (d.wildy@qub.ac.uk).\n\nxix",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216264,
        "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-2003",
        "page_number": 23,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "from last year and the year before. The SARS outbreak was to blame for some of this, since, in the early part of last year we were a little careful about putting events into the programme. Recently, we thought we were going to have to give up our lecture venue at the City Hall for some months, and so slowed the programme down, only to find that the long-awaited renovation and refitting of the Extension Activities Room had been put off, perhaps to the autumn, perhaps indefinitely, because of financial restraints. To put this into perspective, last year we had 17 lectures (2 more than this year), 9 local visits (5 more than this year), and 3 visits to places outside Hong Kong as against 4 this year. Last year the programme thus had 29 items on it, and this year only 23. In 2001-2002 there were 24. We will endeavour to do better during this up-coming year! The Council would welcome Members suggesting items for inclusion in the programme. Members willing to lead visits are particularly urged to put themselves forward!\n\nImproved Relationships with other Branches, and Extended Availability of the Journal in Libraries around the World\n\nCouncil has continued to take action to improve relations with our sister societies around the world, and has also taken action to ensure that full sets of the Journal are to be found in more Libraries, both academic and public. I am glad to repeat what I said last year, that full sets of the Journal are now to be found in all five of the Regional Libraries of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department (in the City Hall, and in the Kowloon, Sha Tin, Tuen Mun and Tsuen Wan Regional Libraries), with three sets in the Causeway Bay Central Library. Sets are also available in the Public Library Service in Macau, and in Shenzhen, as well as in Shanghai. Negotiations are in hand to get sets into the library services at Canton and Peking as well.\n\nAll the tertiary academic libraries in Hong Kong also now have full sets (two sets at Hong Kong University), as do the libraries of the Museums of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department. We are in process of ensuring that the other Museum libraries in Hong Kong also get sets.\n\nDuring this upcoming year, Council will continue to try to increase the number of libraries around the world which have the Journal.\n\nxxiii",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216280,
        "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-2003",
        "page_number": 39,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY LIBRARY\n\nREPORT FOR THE YEAR 2003/2004\n\nAs of 1 March 2004, the library collection had increased to 5,081 volumes. A total of 225 volumes were added during the year. Donations of books were received from Dr Patrick Hase, Dr James Hayes, Mr L. J. M. Litmaath, Mrs Mary Painter, Mr Andrew Tse, Mr Mynak R. Tulku (Director of National Library of Bhutan), and Dr Dan Waters. Gifts of books were also received from Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, Foundation of Islamic Cultural Propagation in the World, Hong Kong Museum of History, The Siam Society, Sweden Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. The Journal of the Siam Society and the National History Bulletin donated by the Siam Society were personally brought back by our Council members, Mr Peter Stuckey and Mr Jason Wordie when they stopped by Bangkok. We would like to thank all our donors and welcome future contributions of old and rare books or journals.\n\nFollowing the journal replacement exercise with the Public Libraries last year, great effort was also made to identify missing volumes of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in academic and museum libraries in Hong Kong. To keep HKBRAS journals up to date so that users will be able to have access to the complete set, Council members agreed to send missing copies to these Libraries on the condition that they will take out a subscription for future issues. All the ten academic institutions including University of Hong Kong, Chinese University of Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Lingnan University, and Open University of Hong Kong; as well as three museums, namely Antiquities & Monuments Office, Hong Kong Heritage Museum and Hong Kong Museum of History now have a complete set of the Society Journal. We will be sending Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences a set of the Society Journals soon and are in the process of granting them Honorary Institutional membership with the understanding that they would assist and encourage scholars in using their Museum to write articles on incidents\n\nxxxix",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216282,
        "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-2003",
        "page_number": 41,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "Council members also expressed interest in digitizing a collection of old RTHK radio programmes related to the history of Asia and Hong Kong in an effort to preserve the culture and heritage of Asia. These are tapes that RTHK will not be able to digitize due to limited resources. The Hong Kong Central Library has requested a list of these titles and arrangement has been made to digitize 11 of them. RAS will pursue digitization for the remaining 34 titles if rights could be obtained.\n\nFollowing the success of the exhibition of the Society's photo archives on Western District in the University of Hong Kong Libraries in January 2000, a similar exhibition was held in the University Libraries in August 2003. These photographs illustrate domestic, industrial and commercial buildings and interesting street scenes in Sheung Wan and Western District in Hong Kong in the 1960's. Again, it aroused great interest. A Library user spotted a man in a photograph that looked very much like his father and requested a copy of this photograph. The Home Affairs Bureau also requested access to our photo archives to assist them in reviewing their existing policy on heritage preservation. Some of these photos were published in the book: Hong Kong Going and Gone and 14 copies were sold during the exhibition. In response to demonstrated interest, a new Committee has now been formed to compile all other photos in the Society not included in Hong Kong Going and Gone and publish a brand new book on cultural and architectural heritage of the Central and Western district.\n\nConcerning usage of the HKBRAS Collection, as compared to last year, reference enquiries had increased by 29%. There is a 64% drop in books being loaned out, perhaps users are making use of the pleasant environment in the Library to read and research rather than borrowing the books.\n\nAs reported by the Hong Kong Central Library, usage of the HKBRAS Library for the period from 1 March 2003 to 29 February 2004 was as follows:\n\nxli",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    }
]