[
    {
        "id": 207024,
        "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": 95,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "Fr. ERNESTO GHERZI, S.J.\n\n89\n\nfirst meeting of the International Meteorological Organization's Regional Association II which was held at Hong Kong in January 1937.*\n\nIn May 1949 he attended the Conference on Storm Warning Procedures at Manila, which established relevant definitions, standards and procedures for the World Meteorological Organization. However, the revolution in China and its associated nationalism had overtaken Zikawei (1947) and he was refused permission to return to China. The then Director of the Royal Observatory Hong Kong, Mr Heywood, found a place for Fr Gherzi on the staff and he worked there until asked by the Portuguese authorities to help reorganise and equip the Macau Observatory.\n\nWhile in Hong Kong, he finished his two-volume work on the 'Meteorology of China'. Certain sections of the draft manuscript, particularly those on tropical cyclones, were hotly disputed by some staff members and led to much animated discussion. The volumes were eventually published in Macau in 1951 and whilst they suffer, in places, from being out of date and lacking in accuracy—Fr Gherzi's notes remained in China—the books were a good record of the climatology of the Far East and of the experiences of himself and others in typhoons.\n\nIt was during the years that Fr Gherzi spent in Hong Kong and Macau that I was fortunate enough to get to know him quite well. He was a competent organist and after work I would sometimes accompany him to the Rosary Church to listen to his playing—Bach was a favourite—or he would come to my quarters to hear records and take a considerable number of glasses of sherry—his preferred drink. He was game for most activities and his majestic figure often looked out of place in the rudimentary sports car or sailing junk that I used in those days. Over the years, Fr Gherzi developed a technique of using cocktail parties to good advantage; on joining them he would charge his glass with sherry and, whilst stroking his grandee's beard, look for the most senior naval person present. He would then disarmingly engage the poor fellow in typhoon talk and eventually succeed in getting him to donate a radar or other piece of electronic equipment of which the good Father was in need.\n\n*This paragraph records two 'firsts' for Hong Kong in the field of international meteorology. Hong Kong is a member of the World Meteorological Organization in its own right on account of these early developments.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207910,
        "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-1976",
        "page_number": 298,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n283\n\nFrom Eastern No. 88, Correspondence relating to the Kowloon-Canton Railway (London, Colonial Office, 1907), Enclosure D in No. 59, Governor Sir M. Nathan to Mr. Lyttelton, 11 January, 1905.\n\n\"Tsun Wan-Two passage boats ply daily between Hong Kong and Tsun Wan; the number of passengers carried each way averages about 60. The principal goods carried are rice, pineapples when in season, grass and wood in connection with the 24 sandal-wood mills, worked by water power, and situated in the various valleys of the Tsun Wan district.\"\n\nFrom G.S.P. Heywood, Rambles in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Kelly & Walsh, Ltd., 2nd Edition 1951, p. 19.\n\n\"Tsun Wan has several local industries; silk-weaving is carried on in an up-to-date mill next door to the primitive and unhygienic sheds where noodles are made from powdered beans. In the valley running up into the hills to the south-west of Tai Mo Shan there is a village consisting entirely of watermills, where wood is ground up for the manufacture of joss sticks. This picturesque place is easily reached from the road; the path starts at the bridge about half a mile beyond Tsun Wan, near the 9th milestone, and follows the stream upwards, first on one bank and then on the other. The first watermill is reached in 5 minutes' walk from the road, and beyond are a dozen more little houses perched on the sides of the valley, each with its waterwheel busily turning. For a small tip the owner of one of these mills will show you inside; the atmosphere is thick with fragrant dust, and through it you can dimly see great stone-headed hammers pounding away at the aromatic wood.\"*\n\nHong Kong, 1974.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nCHINESE IN THE VOLUNTEER FORCES OF HONG KONG\n\nIn my article \"A Short History of Military Volunteers in Hong Kong\" (Volume 11 of this Journal, 1971: 151-171) I mentioned the uncertainty which surrounded the membership of the successive volunteer units by local Chinese (pages 164-5 refer). I suggested that it was possible that the late Sir Man-kam Lo was the first or among the first to join, in the 1920s.\n\n* Plate 26 illustrates this Note.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214568,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1998",
        "page_number": 426,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "TRACING GRAVES IN HONG KONG: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY\n\nDAN WATERS\n\n395\n\nIn a letter dated 4 April 1998, the RASHKB received a request from the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia (BACSA) to try to trace seven graves in Hong Kong. The BACSA had received these requests from the dead persons' relatives, living in Britain, who were seeking information regarding the whereabouts of the graves. Apart from names and in four cases exact dates (in the other three cases approximate dates) of deaths, no other information was, I was informed, available. We were not told, for instance, the dead persons' religions or denominations which made the search more difficult.\n\nThe first attempt to track down the graves amounted to the best part of a Saturday afternoon which I spent in what, up to the early 1970s was known as the Colonial Cemetery, in Happy Valley on Hong Kong Island. It is now called the Hong Kong Cemetery. This is mainly Protestant although there are a few Japanese and Chinese buried there who were not Christians. On plan, the cemetery is divided into sections. There, with the help of Mr Pau Chi-sing the full-time cemetery attendant, after searching the register, I was eventually able to find three graves. Names, dates of deaths, sections in the cemetery and grave numbers are as follows:\n\nBoyle, Shirley Florence, 5 November 1945, Section 16F, Grave 10232\n\nBoyle, Florence Ruby, 12 August 1968, Section 45, Grave 7423\n\nCornell, Francis Heawood, October 1908, Section 16, Grave 11772\n\nBearing in mind the ages of the graves, with no relatives or friends locally (one supposes) to look after them, they are in reasonable condition. Some settlement has taken place and gravestones are in need of repairs in some cases. Cleaning and re-polishing are necessary. As a result names are not always easy to read which made finding the graves more difficult. The last headstone mentioned above (Cornell), which is surmounted by a cross, has settled especially badly.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    }
]