[ { "id": 208859, "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-1980", "page_number": 21, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "been teaching at Wah Yan since 1960. The other was given by myself, and I spoke on “Chinese and Western medicine: compatible or antagonistic?\" My data was gathered during a three-year research project into the medical system of Hong Kong conducted at Hong Kong University's Centre of Asian Studies. In February Mr. Patrick Lau spoke on \"Rural Architecture in Hong Kong\". He is the author of a book on the subject, based on a series of survey studies and published jointly by the Government Information Services and the Hong Kong Tourist Association.\n\nIn February Dr. Norman Ko, Reader in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hong Kong, gave a talk on \"Underwater Photography and some Observations of Marine Life in Hong Kong\". Finally, in March, there were two talks: one given by Mr. Nigel Cameron, a well-known locally-based historian and art critic, and author of many books and essays, on \"The K'ang-Hsi Emperor (1662-1722)\". The other was given by Professor Winston Wan Lo on the work of his late father, Lo Hsiang-lin, who was Professor of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong. Winston Lo is himself a professor of History at Florida State University. Future talks are in the process of being arranged, and you will already have received advanced notice of two, possibly three talks for April.\n\nTours Abroad\n\nIn April 1979 Dr. Shaw led a trip to Darjeeling and Sikkim, and in July another to Srinagar and Ladakh or “Little Tibet\". Members on the latter trip were particularly fortunate in that, by a harsh 3 a.m. start, they were able to witness and record the most interesting part of the final day's ceremonies in the annual masked dance festival at Hemis Monastery near Leh. Our Society is, of course, a non-profit-making organization, and Dr. Shaw was able to make a refund of $240 to each participant on the Sikkim trip, although a nominal loss was made on that to Srinagar and Ladakh. At the end of this week, a group of 19 members will leave for the Kingdom of Bhutan, the last of the forbidden kingdoms opening its doors to a select group of visitors. Again, they will be led by Dr. Shaw. In the absence of any response from China International Travel Service in Peking concerning our proposals for visits to China by groups of members of the Society, no further representations were made during the past year. Members will, of course, know they can now, as individuals, join a number of tours operating from Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209752, "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-1983", "page_number": 11, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "the compatibility of Confucian values and attitudes with the requisites of modernization.\n\n6th June 1983 Dr. Norman Miners, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Hong Kong, talked interestingly about the Hong Kong Government Opium Monopoly between 1914 and 1941.\n\n22nd November 1983 Mrs. Mimi Chan, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Asian Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong gave an enlivening talk on the study of lexical-borrowing from Chinese into English with special reference to Hong Kong, entitled \"Hongs, Tongs and all that Jazz”.\n\n6th December 1983 Miss Elizabeth Ride, daughter of our former President, Sir Lindsay Ride, talked informatively on his wartime activities and his role in the establishment of the British Army Aid Group in China, following up her brother's book on this subject.\n\n1st March 1984 Dr. Brian Shaw of the Department of Political Science, University of Hong Kong gave a well-illustrated talk on the kingdom of Bhutan and its cultural traditions.\n\nPhotographic Survey and Publications\n\nMembers will remember the successful publication Hong Kong Going and Gone published by the Society in 1980. This provided photographs and text on a number of interesting old buildings in the Central and Western districts. The Society planned to follow this up with another book, but cataloguing a mass of photographs from these and adjoining districts was felt to be a prerequisite to another publication or any further photographic work. Last summer, through arrangements made by Ms Elizabeth Sinn, Mr. Tony Rydings and Mr. Ian Diamond, university students undertook the work for a suitable remuneration and the backlog was cleared. Since then we have been fortunate in obtaining the enthusiastic support of our member, Mr. Philip Bruce of the Government Information Services Department, who has already taken 1,000 photographs of the Wan Chai area and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215463, "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": 240, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "189\n\nBrief apology\n\nDear Reader,\n\nBHUTAN - WHY NOT?\n\nROBERT NIELD\n\nIf you wish to read a learned article about a little-known Himalayan culture, its people, history and religion, you may stop here. Also stop here if you want to add to your already in-depth understanding of the Kingdom of Bhutan. There is not much on the following pages that can be described as \"in depth.\" Moreover, for a general introduction you should read instead the guidebooks that most people seem to refer to, namely the Lonely Planet guide and the Inside Pocket Guide; these were valuable sources of reference during my visit,\n\nWhat does follow is an account of the observations and recollections of one member of the 27-person Royal Asiatic Society study tour of Bhutan, that took place from 8 to 19 February 2002. All aspects of this logistically demanding tour were organised most ably by Dr Brian Shaw and his wife Felicity. I must record here my thanks to Brian for his help in ensuring that at least the factual content of this narrative is not too far off the mark. All other observations are mine alone, and indeed might be at variance with those of other members of the tour.\n\nThe source of the Nile\n\nThe first announcement for the RAS trip to Bhutan appeared in the Society's newsletter in about September 2001. I looked at it and thought that I would think about it. After all, where was it? What was it? Why go there? Sure - I had heard of it and I knew that it was somewhere like Nepal, Assam or Sikkim. The adventurer in me said that I had to go, simply because I had not been there before. So I thought I would do some reading about it - and then decide. Inevitably I did not quite get round to doing the reading. I looked at a few web sites, and found myself side-tracked into some antiquarian book dealers' offerings, imagining what it must have been like to set out to discover the source of the Nile. At least I knew that the Nile did not originate in\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215464, "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": 241, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "190\n\nBhutan, so when the absolute deadline for bookings came in December, I simply said 'Why not?' and sent in my cheque.\n\nUnfortunately my favourite travelling companion (my wife) was not able to come with me. The start of the RAS trip coincided exactly with the start of her parents' six-week visit to Hong Kong to stay with us. I honestly cannot recall which booking happened first, theirs or mine - honestly.\n\nMountains of reading\n\nI was able to do some rather brief research before the journey, although I was not able to do justice to Brian Shaw's three-page bibliography. (With much relief, I found out later that I was not the only one to have failed in this regard.) I was able to discover that this \"tiny\" mountain kingdom is not so tiny after all, being about the size of Switzerland. Until unification in the 17th century, Bhutan was a series of independent valley-states. Initially influenced by its much larger northern neighbour, Tibet, what is now Bhutan became Buddhist in the 8th century and is now perhaps the staunchest of Buddhist countries. The country was never part of British India, but following a clash in the mid-19th century relations with the Raj warmed and these continued after India's independence. Even so, Bhutan remained for most purposes cut off from the rest of the world until the 1970s, not least due to its remote location in the eastern Himalayas.\n\nIt is almost inevitable, if travelling to Bhutan from Hong Kong, to route via an overnight stopover in Bangkok. But this can hardly be considered a hardship. By the time our evening flight had delivered us to Don Muang airport, and thence to the Windsor Hotel, it was well past midnight and bedtime, although I did hear some enthusiasm being expressed for a neighbouring beer garden.\n\nI awoke the following morning just in time to catch the tail end of breakfast, and then repaired to the room to really sort out the bags I had packed in a bit of a hurry. The rest of the day was spent looking for photographic opportunities along Bangkok's klongs (canals), and trying hard not to think of the 4.15 a.m. wake-up call the following morning.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215630, "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": 407, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "358\n\ncollecting that the flow greatly increased. These discoveries coincided with a period of great wealth in Britain, so that many owners of gardens could and did aspire to these exotics. Remove rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, peonies and magnolias alone from our great gardens and we would hardly recognise them, but almost all of these are relatively recent, and oriental, introductions.\n\nCornwall was chosen as a suitable home for many of these early exotics largely because of its mild and damp climate. Many of the plants were thought to be more tender than they have proved to be (camellias were initially grown almost exclusively in greenhouses, but the Japonicas are actually hardy), and as a result some have grown spectacularly better than they do in the wild, even out of hothouses. One has only to visit Heligan to see this: individual rhododendrons left in happy and unpruned seclusion for 70 years have grown to the size of small houses, with a diameter of up to 70 feet, and at Trewithen, Pieris formosa have reached 25 feet in height. At Caerhays, Rhododendron keysii (from Bhutan, 1851) produces its tiny red and yellow bell-like flowers for eight months of the year. When seed arrived from the collectors, its recipients often had no idea of the size of the eventual shrub or tree, so that planned planting was difficult and the original gardeners would be amazed to see the results now. It is hard to avoid statistics in these Cornish gardens: Tregrehan alone for instance has 15 trees which are regarded as the biggest and best specimens in the country (including the Handkerchief Tree from China, Davidia involucrata).\n\nMuch of Cornwall's spring tourism is the direct result of these largely Chinese, Himalayan and Japanese plant introductions, and many of the great gardens actually close in the summer, as their glory lies in their spring flowering magnolias, azaleas and rhododendrons.\n\nWe were guided first around Trewithen's gardens by Maggie herself. This garden, created largely in its present form between 1904 and 1960 by its owner George Johnstone, around an 18th century house, was set on its new path with the delivery of 100 rhododendron hybrids in 1905. It now houses a marvellous collection of magnolias, rhododendrons and camellias, amongst many others. Some of the planting around the Great Glade is from seed brought back by Kingdom Ward himself. We searched out the Magnolia wilsonii (introduced to Britain in 1920 after discovery by Ernest Wilson in 1906) with its", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]