[
    {
        "id": 206972,
        "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": 43,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n37\n\nVicar Apostolic, Bishop Raimondi, and the heads of the various Catholic missions and organisations. He attended mass daily at the new Catholic Cathedral in Caine Road. But he drew a blank: no Catholic institution was prepared to finance any of his schemes. He now threw away his mask of piety, doubtless with great relief, and settled down to enjoy himself and to gull another class of person. He soon installed a mistress in a rented house in Lyndhurst Terrace, loaded her with gimcrack jewellery and dresses from Gate and Fairall, the milliners of Queen's Road, and hired for her a sedan chair, complete with liveried chair-bearers. She appeared with the King on sundry royal occasions at the Hong Kong Hotel.\n\nIt is difficult to identify Mayréna's 'consort'. Soulié asserts that she was a Miss Dahlberg,25 who had accompanied her brother and Mayréna to Hong Kong on the Frejr, and that Mayréna met this blonde Swedish ice-maiden in 1888 at Bangkok, where she was engaged apparently in archaeological exploration; but other writers suggest Mayréna's new mistress was a lady from an Italian Opera Company touring in the East,26 which arrived in Hong Kong in late 1888. The latter seems the more plausible account, for at that time European opera singers and ballet dancers were often accommodating ladies who desired nothing better than to be set up in state by some rich protector. Whoever she was, all witnesses agree that the \"Queen of the Sedangs' in Hong Kong was a most voluptuous demi-mondaine and that she fascinated the topers of the Hong Kong Hotel and the other hostelries that Mayréna frequented.\n\nMuch of Mayréna's roistering was done necessarily at the Hotel, since he could obtain credit and simply await the chits at the end of the month, and in its hospitable bar he met many kindred spirits, such as the atrabilious, scandal-mongering Robert Fraser-Smith,27 proprietor of the Hong Kong Telegraph, and also John Joseph Francis, Q.C.,28 Hong Kong's leading barrister and noted Irish tippler.\n\nBy 1888 the Hong Kong Hotel, established in 1860, had become Hong Kong's social centre. One author claims it was ‘rightly termed the heart of the Colony, for it is one great social rendezvous for dinners, teas, dances, and is probably the most noteworthy meeting place in the Orient'.29 'Proteus', in the Hong Kong Telegraph, supplies this description of its grandeur:\n\nAfter a shower-bath and a change of clothes in our room—and all the rooms in the hotel are on the same scale of loftiness and",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211595,
        "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": 10,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "AGM for an approach for financial assistance to those leading “Hongs\" which support the parent body in London with its publishing expenses, a letter has now been sent to them to this end. We waited for publication of the new book and the latest Journal before taking action, so that they could see the results of our labours and (hopefully) feel more encouraged to help thereby. There is no doubt that the time has come to seek their assistance, given the difficulty in making ends meet and yet pursuing an energetic and rounded programme of activities in line with our remit.\n\nThe Programme\n\nThe past twelve months saw 9 lectures, 10 visits and one Chinese dinner, besides the usual dinner following the AGM. The visits were the largest number on record. This was due to a greater sharing of the load by members of the Activities Committee, which now includes Members of the Society as well as Councillors. Details are as follows:\n\n  \n    Dr. Maria Jaschok\n    “Concubines and Bond Servants\"\n    18 April\n  \n  \n    Dr. Tom Stanley\n    **Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War'\n    12 May\n  \n  \n    Professor Tong Kin-woon\n    “Oracle Bones, the Key to Shang China\"\n    9 June\n  \n  \n    Stephen and Anne Selby\n    \"Pukka Pidgin\"\n    14 July\n  \n  \n    Dr. Dea Birkett\n    \"Women Travellers in Asia'\n    28 July\n  \n  \n    \n    Chinese Dinner in the City Hall Restaurant\n    25 September\n  \n  \n    Dr. Lauren Pfister\n    \"Clues to the Life and Academic Achievement of James Legge, 1815-1897”\n    20 October\n  \n  \n    Professor John Hodgkiss\n    **The Biology of Mangroves and the Role They Play in Hong Kong\"\n    | December\n  \n  \n    Professor Graham Johnson\n    \"The Hong Kong Chinese in Canada: an Updating\"\n    5 January\n  \n  \n    Rev. Carl Smith (with Elizabeth Sinn, Susanna Hoe, Maria Jaschok, Patrick Hase and James Hayes)\n    \"The Ladies of Lyndhurst Terrace\"\n    23 February\n  \n  \n    Dr. Mimi Chan\n    \"Images of Chinese Women in Anglo-American Literature\"\n    \n  \n\nix",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    }
]