[ { "id": 204252, "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-1961", "page_number": 20, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n17\n\nEnglish was the most eminent. A new era in Sinology opened with Edouard Chavannes and Paul Pelliot at the turn of the century, by whom the pattern for present day studies was set.\n\nAt this time too (1898) the Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient was established in Indo-China, and the thorough and many-sided work of the French scholars in South-east Asia commenced, which included the superb achievement, still in progress, of the conservation of Angkor,\n\nSpace does not permit to treat of the studies in Indonesia and Malaya, in Japan and Korea.\n\nBut in closing mention must be made of two special subjects, which affect all countries: Buddhism and Oriental Art.\n\nIt is hard to realize that there was a time when Buddhism was unknown to the West. The study of Buddhism commenced at the beginning of the nineteenth century with a young Hungarian scholar who set out for the East to find the origin of the Magyar race, which he rightly divined was connected with that of the Turks. His travels brought him to the Tibetan-Himalayan borderland, where he settled in the little village of Kanum in the Upper Sutlej valley to study Tibetan Buddhism. It is interesting to note that it was with the Tibetan branch of Buddhism that the study of Buddhism commenced. Later the great studies of the Sanskrit and Pali Canons began, and later still of the Chinese Canon, in which Japanese scholars have played a very great part. At the present time the Tibetan Canon and the mystic forms of Tibetan Buddhism are receiving great attention.\n\nThe study of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Persian, Tibetan and Cambodian art is now receiving great attention. The last century saw a beginning in all these directions. Through the fundamental books of the pioneers, the magnificent collections in museums, the improvements in modern photography, and the facilities in travel, the finest examples of oriental art are now open to all. Persian miniatures, Moghul architecture, Indian sculpture, Chinese porcelain, Japanese temples, Angkor Wat and Borobudur are now well known.\n\nBut a final word must be said: he who would understand the East must be deeply religious. This does not refer to any particular church or sect of religion, but to the religious spirit diffused through all.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204852, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "130\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\ntoday. This information negates the subsequent statement \"The only specifically recorded Lamqua portrait in an American collection is that of Dr. Peter Parker\n\n+\n\n8\n\nA bibliography omitting nearly 50% of the last published bibliography will startle any serious scholar. It may be possible to write about Chinnery without consulting E. W. Bovil's articles in Notes and Queries and about the Opium War without using Maurice Collis' Foreign Mud with its Chinnery illustrations, but it is not recommended practice. W. C. Hunter, partner in Russell & Co., is quoted in the text, but both of his books The Fan-Kwae in Canton before Treaty Days 1825-1844 and Bits of Old China with its chapter on Chinnery, are omitted from the list. Any modern researcher will want to check the Jardine-Matheson papers in Cambridge, England. They are not mentioned here. There is a list of plates, but no general index.\n\nIn the China section of photographs, there are 57 oils, water-colors, and drawings captioned as by Chinnery, also 10 so-called \"School of Chinnery\", 28 port scenes, all called \"School\", and 2 miscellaneous. Authentication of any artist's work, particularly if unsigned, is a matter of opinion. When in doubt, it is far sounder to \"attribute\" and the best museums follow this custom. In recent months, a world expert on Chinnery and your reviewer considered together these 57 pictures and questioned or denied 21 of them, a substantial percentage.\n\n+ •\n\nIn 1953 the statement was made, and remains unchallenged, it is obvious that the Hong Kong Chinnery is the only portrait of Howqua that may be said to have been painted in a truly accomplished Western manner such as one would expect from the brush of Chinnery. The other portraits of Howqua, in spite of their long-standing attribution to Chinnery, almost without exception speak of Western art with a strong Cantonese accent\". There is no photograph of the Chinnery portrait of Howqua in Hong Kong in this book a significant omission. However, there are three portraits of Howqua11- all obviously by Chinese\n\n* Page 39.\n\n9 Arts Council Catalogue 1957.\n\n10 Albert Ten Eyck Gardner-The Art Quarterly, Winter 1953\n\n11 Plate 39 top and bottom, Plate 40 top.\n\n10", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205771, "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": 77, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "TUNG KWU ISLAND\n\n71\n\nit was chipped on each edge to take a rope or rattan band, indicating later use as either a net-sinker or a hammer; perhaps both, as it seems water-worn. The material is a welded tuff, a very common rock type in Hong Kong.\n\nFrom shore below sand cliff at south end of isthmus, which had been cut through: hand hoe, found below the original centre of the sandbank, roughly chipped from a pebble of banded rhyolite, and showing slight signs of wear at the acute angles of the trapezoid formed by its outline.\n\nRounded stone of hard welded tuff, worked into shape by pecking to make a rolling-stone of the type used in the Polynesian game known as 'LAFO' in the Uvea and Tonga islands, or the game of bowls practised in the Hawaiian islands. This rolling-stone was found on the west beach about 20 yards from where the hand hoe lay, and near the sand cliff.* It appears slightly roughened at the centre of each smooth side, possibly to give a better grip. This is not the only rolling-stone found on the Colony's beaches: another in my collection comes from Castle Peak, and is close in shape and size to the specimens shown in the British and Honolulu museums.\n\n3. Found loose: exact find position not known:\n\nStone of pentagonal shape, sides unequal, with signs of hammering at the long point and on one edge. The side between the point and the worn edge has been flaked to some degree of sharpness, while the other sides are left flat. The rock resembles a fine-grained grit, and must have been imported.\n\nTwo small stones shaped like the point of a knife, one of a fine-grained shale, the other of a thin-bedded shale with lenticles of grit. The former shows edges polished and curved so as to meet at a point, now broken off. Possibly used as grave goods. Semi-circular stone of gray shale with pinkish stains, chipped on outer edge, and with inner edge hollowed out by chipping or pecking. The shape is very roughly that of the ritual jade (#), the image of the god of the North in the belief of Chou times.\n\nStone axe polisher of white muscovite-bearing sandstone, originally used for arrow straightening and polishing; four of its five used sides have been slightly worn hollow,\n\nStone adze, half-shouldered, with one side polished flat from butt to edge, and showing chipping on its edge caused by use; made from a fine-grained hard gray shale,\n\n*It can be seen in the centre of Plate 3.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206197, "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-1971", "page_number": 14, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "At a later meeting the committee further decided that our active support should begin by informing you officially of our views on this important subject, but in doing so, I must not give you the impression that it represents the considered opinion of the Society as a whole. That may be forwarded later.\n\nI would however like to take this opportunity of making the point which I personally believe cannot be too strongly stressed at this stage of Hong Kong's development, where one so frequently still hears the question asked: \"Why do we need a public museum?\" Those who still ask that question obviously know nothing of modern museums or modern education. We need an up-to-date museum, not because all other cities in the world worthy of the name have at least one museum and that therefore we must follow suit, but because a museum in these days is something more than a mere repository of things relating to the past; it is as much an active, integral and essential part of any system of public education as a school, a college or a university is.\n\nAny modern museum worthy of the name provides opportunities for study which are complementary to the routine courses provided by institutions of learning at all levels of education - primary, secondary or tertiary - and the real value of these complementary opportunities lies in the fact that they are of a more informal nature, and consequently allow (and indeed encourage) the development of initiative and specialization among pupils.\n\nFor this reason, expenditure on a museum project is not to be regarded as favouring the intelligentsia or a minority group; it is essential for its part in the balanced development of the young minds in the colony of all classes.\n\nThis makes it of all the more importance in Hong Kong where our youth forms over 50% of our population, because the financial provision for these educational facilities is every bit as important as the provision of recreational facilities for our young people which so much more readily captures the imagination of social workers and the readers of the headlines in our press.\n\nYours faithfully,\n\nL. T. RIDE\n\nPresident,\n\nHong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206940, "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": 11, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "5\n\nof disease and urbanisation in Singapore and Hong Kong. Finally Dr. Shih Hsiao-yen, Curator of the Far Eastern Department of the Royal Ontario Museum, and Adjunct Professor of the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto, talked on the relationship between Chinese tomb figurines and monumental sculpture. Dr. Shih, who is presently visiting professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, illustrated her talk with many striking colour slides.\n\nOur overseas trip this year, which took place over five days at the Chinese New Year, proved very popular. It was, like our previous Thailand excursion, very ably led by Mr. Michael Smithies. Forty-one members joined the party, starting at Vientiane, proceeding to Luang Prabang, and returning again to Vientiane. They visited museums, Vat, a silk-weaving village, and other handicraft centres, caves and ceremonies; and they saw a rare performance of classical dancing given by the Royal Lao dancers. It is hoped that we may continue to arrange at least one overseas trip a year and we have already received offers to lead future excursions from two of our members. I regret to say that our proposed trip to China has not advanced very far. On the advice of the China Travel Agency we revised our original proposals, suggesting several small groups of ten to fifteen members—and also the possibility of diversifying, some groups making a longer (approximately three weeks) trip to take in Peking and other northerly areas, and some making a shorter (about ten days) trip to places within Kwangtung Province to include museums, potteries and archeologically interesting areas. Recently members of another learned society in England made a trip to China and we can only hope that we are not too far down China's list of priority groups.\n\nARTS CENTRE MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE\n\nA few words about the progress of the Hong Kong Arts Centre and our participation. The Society became a constituent member of the Arts Centre in January 1973, paying its entrance fee in February of that year. The Society had long wished to have its own premises both for holding lectures and discussions and for housing its library and archives, but despite efforts it was never able to afford to fulfil these wishes and now with astronomical rents it is clearly most unlikely that it ever will. We joined the Arts Centre so that when its buildings are completed we may enjoy", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206958, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "The Paper Chase\n\n23\n\nThe main function of the P.R.O. is the conservation of all government records of permanent value for official reference and private research. More specifically, this means all documents which possess value for:\n\n(i) documenting the constitutional and legal basis of government;\n\n(ii) documenting the origin, development, organisation, functions, policies and substantive activities of government departments;\n\n(iii) protecting the rights and privileges of private citizens and organisations; and\n\n(iv) research into political, social and economic affairs and the history of the community.\n\nYou will notice from this, by the way, that archives are not preserved solely in the interests of historians. The scope of modern government is wide and there are few aspects of human activity and environment to which official records do not refer. A government's archives, therefore, are potentially of research value to every academic discipline.\n\nArchive institutions, like libraries, museums and art galleries, need to be located in places where they are easily accessible to the public. The trouble is that archives, and especially government archives, need a great deal of storage space; so that in cities like Hong Kong, where office accommodation is at a premium, the housing of archives has special problems. Stored archives are immensely heavy and this limits us to ground floor accommodation or to buildings especially constructed to withstand high floor-loadings. Again, if one provides at the outset for long-term space needs this means tying up large building areas which will remain under-utilised for a long period. The alternative, of providing only for short-term requirements, means constant removal to new premises. We have had to compromise. The P.R.O. is housed at present* in temporary premises in Garden Road with accommodation for 5,450 shelf-feet of records. In about April this year we shall be moving to the Murray Road Multi-storey Car Park Building where we shall have room to accommodate about 15,000 shelf-feet of records. The new premises will be equipped with, among other things, a document repair section and bindery, a photographic laboratory and, I\n\n* January 1974.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207580, "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-1975", "page_number": 348, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n339\n\ncontrolled the central government of the late Ming period. However, due to the expansion of the military power of the Manchus, the central activity of this Association from 1640, turns into the intellectuals' Anti-Manchu Movement.41 The fact that Hsiao Yün-ts'ung has been a member of the Reconquering Association can certainly help us to understand more about his life and personality. Although we know nothing about Hsiao's Anti-Manchu activity, a description of him as, “taking up the life of a hermit, he devoted himself to poetry, essay-writing, scholarship, and painting” (p. 177) is at least not the entire picture of Hsiao Yün-ts'ung's life. He must have been patriotic and full of the spirit of justice at one time. More likely it was only because of the triumph of the Manchus that he was forced to live as a recluse for his last 30 years. Professor Li has tended to ignore this key point in Hsiao Yün-ts'ung's life.\n\nTo conclude, in the 20th Century, in the 60 years since Stephen W. Bushell (1844-1908) published his classic Chinese Art42, due to the stimulation given by the opening of museums, the growth of private collections and a developed new interest in studying things oriental, a good number of histories of Chinese art have been written by scholars of different nationalities. None of them, however, has attempted a Chinese art history based on a single private collection,43 like Thousand Peaks and Myriad Ravines. This appears to be the first book of this kind, and despite those problems that the reviewer has already pointed out, and some other minor disputable points44, it is not inappropriate to call this book the first such publication. It is one, too, that is associated with a unique and earlier feature of writing Chinese art history, the introduction.\n\nThe reviewer suggests that as a Research Curator of the Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum in Kansas, with its far better known collection, Professor Li should publish another such history of Chinese art, or history of Chinese painting, based on that renowned assemblage.\n\nUniversity of Hong Kong, 1976\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\nCHUANG SHEN\n\n1 For instance, the well-known collection of Mr. K. Sumitomo, is described in the illustrated and descriptive catalogue Senoku Seisho ★A★T (The collection of old bronzes of K. Sumitomo) first edited by Prof. Kosaku Hamada∗ ∗ ∗ and others in 1911. After being revised by Prof. Sueji Umehara∗ ∗ ∗ it was reprinted in 1934 in Kyoto. The additional catalogue concerning Mr. Sumitomo's new acquisitions on ancient", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208393, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "SHIWAN POTTERY EXPLORED\n\nFREDRIKKE SKINSNES SCOLLARD*\n\nIn April of 1977 I had the opportunity to visit the pottery-producing town of Shiwan for the first time with the Oriental Ceramic Society tour. At that time for foreigners, group travel to China from Hong Kong still involved months of waiting for approval, and the individual trip needed for my own research of Shiwan pottery was an impossibility. The day spent in Shiwan however, was sufficient to establish a few acquaintances and to discover that fundamental archaeological research was in progress.\n\nIn May of the same year I gave a talk to the Oriental Ceramic Society titled \"Shiwan Reverberatory\". The reason for the choice of that title was that in ten years' experience studying Shiwan pottery, I have met with a great deal of resistance to the study of these wares. Art historians feel they are a coarse and unimportant local product with little esthetic merit, and even most non-specialists more often than not react with \"I just don't like it.\" In a first lecture on Shiwan pottery, I therefore did not expect to gain immediate converts to this art with a very different and unfamiliar esthetic. Rather, the choice of the title indicated that I felt the subject was worthy of much more attention, and that I hoped, over the next few years, my audience would have repeated opportunity to see and study Shiwan pottery, thereby slowly gaining familiarity with its esthetic.\n\nIndeed, over the last two years, more attention has been paid to these wares. In October of 1977, the Hong Kong Museum of Art in cooperation with the Leal Senado of Macau, staged an exhibition of 139 pieces and published a full colour catalogue. Mr. Lawrence Tam delivered an excellent talk to this Society on the subject, and Mr. Nigel Cameron critiqued the exhibition with his \"Second Thoughts on Shekwan\" in the South China Morning Post.1 At present, the Fung Ping Shan Museum of the University of Hong Kong, in cooperation with Guangzhou museums, is preparing a joint exhibition on Shiwan pottery for the fall of 1979.\n\n* Ms. Scollard holds Masters' degrees in the History of Art (Hawaii) and Chinese Literature (Chicago). She is Associate-in-Research, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208473, "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": 197, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "WOODBLOCK PRINTING\n\n181\n\nmethods had been much improved and paper became more economical. Many important works were done in this period. “Tou Pan” (ƒ) or multi-colour printing was also invented. Some of their works are well known to us through the painting manual series of the Ten Bamboo Studio († in Nanking (). Formerly, colour prints were made by first putting different colours on various parts of the woodblock. In the \"Tou Pan\" technique, different blocks were made and colours of different shades were applied on these blocks. Sometimes as many as hundreds of blocks of different sizes were used to make one print. In this way, very complex colour combinations could be achieved. The invention of “Tou Pan” and “embossing” (##) techniques in printing was attributed to Hu Cheng-jen (‡), the owner of the Ten Bamboo Studio, whose Catalogue of the Ten Bamboo Studio Letter-sheet Design and the Calligraphic and Painting Manual are monumental landmarks in the history of art.\n\nOther important works were produced in the early Ch'ing period. One of them was the Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual († \n4) compiled and printed by a famous painter Wang Kai (± *) for the Studio of the Mustard Seed Garden in Nanking in the years 1679-1701 of the K'ang Hsi period (). The manual was printed in colour by using the same techniques as the Ten Bamboo Studio and was printed together with painting instructions. It has been widely used by painters as a bible of Chinese painting. The manual has been copied and reprinted many times by different painters and publishers during Ch'ing Dynasty. The copies we can obtain in the market are usually photostat printed copies from the reproductions issued in the Late Ch'ing period. The pictures contained in these new copies are no longer as gorgeous as those in the original ones. We can hardly see an original copy as only a few of them are known, and are being treasured by museums and libraries or private collectors.\n\nDuring the past thousand years, book printings were centered in Szechuen, Chekiang, Anwhei and Fukien Provinces where paper was also manufactured. The folk or religious printing work had been widespread all over China, but the noted centres of the production were Yang Liu Ching (##), To Hua Wu (✯✯) and Fatshan (*). Yang Liu Ching is a village on the outskirts of Tientsin city (△) and the people living there have been engaged", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209838, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "75\n\nlexicon of one language, but these are not 'loans', and no \"borrowing\" is involved, since there is no requirement that they be returned to the 'lending' language. Also, the language from which the words originate does not actually lose the words, which still form part of its vocabulary. In the case of words of Chinese origin in English, what really happens is that the English language fashions a word out of its own phonetic material based on a model which exists in another language, in this case Chinese, and assigns a meaning to this new word similar to, or identical with, the meaning of the 'model'. The question then arises: When does a 'new' word become fully assimilated into the English vocabulary? What criteria could be used to determine whether a word is part of the language or whether it is still 'foreign'? An early attempt to deal with the issue is found in the Introduction to The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicized Words and Phrases. The compiler, C. A. M. Fennell uses a narrow set of criteria based on English as the language of Great Britain only. He dismisses as 'exotic' words which have been neither wholly nor partially naturalized; such as the names of foreign institutions, of articles which are unknown in Great Britain, or only seen in museums and collections, of foreign offices and dignities & c... .. And foreign words which are seldom or never used except by writers addicted to interlarding their pages with foreign words and phrases.'14\n\nThe idea of integration into English today is no longer one of 'Anglicization' because of the existence of English as a world language. We are concerned with English as used by English-speaking people all over the world, but especially with English used in Hong Kong. The problem of assimilation is not an either/or matter, but there are intermediate stages. In considering this question two complementary approaches may be adopted. Firstly, we take into account the native-speakers' reactions. Do they consider the word in question to be an English word, or is it a Chinese word which sometimes occurs in English discourse, in the same way as, for example, a French phrase or two may be thrown in for effect? We have found that a number of the words in our appendix are still felt to be 'foreign' by the respondents to our questionnaire, this despite their rather frequent occurrence in English publications. Although they are easily understood by English-speakers, the words are often", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209959, "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": 218, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "196\n\nthe vessel appointed to receive us, in the 10th month of the year Yeh-sze.\n\nLike Kong-heang my renown is small; like Lea-heang I have taught the classics, but profited little by the examples found in them. My attainments are slender, and I can only be compared to a ragged colt that has no real substance.\"\n\nIn view of Cree's mention of Charles Gutzlaff being on board the Vixen, and of the dearth of translators in Hong Kong at that time, it may be that the translation of the poem was made by Gutzlaff himself.\n\nNOTE\n\nThis is probably Liu Kai-yü (M), a native of Shun-Tien, Prefect of Canton (AHA) from 1843, or Liu Hsin (2), a native of Hsiang Fu, Honan, who succeeded him as Prefect of Canton in 1845 c.£. ƒƒƒ± (+M/2## Vol. 1), p. 405 (Note from Rev. C.T. Smith).\n\nRELICS OF HONG KONG AND CHINA IN BRITISH ARMY AND REGIMENTAL MUSEUMS\n\nP. BRUCE\n\nWhile in the United Kingdom in 1983 I visited a number of army museums in search of items related to China. There is, in fact, quite a lot to see, though the museums are scattered the length and breadth of the country and considerable travelling is involved. However, members of the society may like a brief note on what I was able to find and it would be interesting to hear of anything additional which is known of.\n\nI started at the Royal Marines Museum, at Southsea, Hampshire, which is, in effect, a part of Portsmouth. There is an interesting collection of China items here.\n\nThe oldest items are several assorted rifles and swords and an impressive Chinese cannon which looks as if it would have fired a shot about the size of a tennis ball. It is crafted to include a ferocious dragon's head at the muzzle from which the ball would roar forth. These were picked up in 1842.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209964, "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": 223, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "201\n\nThere were two museums which I intended to visit but as my daughter's birth day approached the time available for such luxuries declined.\n\nI wrote to the Duke of Edinburgh's Royal Regiment museum, at Lichfield, Staffordshire, and received a very helpful reply. The 98th Regiment, later the 2nd North Staffords, served in the First China War and in Hong Kong.\n\nOn display at the museum are a \"soldier's watercolour\" in the uniform of the period c1840-50. \"This also shows a sentry box and the Colours and seems intended to indicate a coastal location. The 'China Dragon' is on the colour and the painting could well relate to the Regiment's subsequent service in Hong Kong (1842-45)\".\n\nThere is an officers' Shako plate (1829-44), an officers' shoulder belt plate, an officers' sword belt clasp (1826-55) and \"two buttons, a shoulder numeral and a few other relics of the period, subsequently dug up in Hong Kong\".\n\nThe other museum which I missed was that of the Royal Berkshire Museum, successors to the 49th Regiment, in Salisbury, Wiltshire.\n\nMy experience in 1983 proved that visitors to England should make a point of calling in at virtually any regimental or army museum that they pass. What may be judged an unimportant relic against the span of centuries of regimental history may be viewed quite differently from a Hong Kong point of view.\n\nNot army, but equally interesting, is the National Railway Museum, in York, which might seem an unlikely place to search for souvenirs of China--but it houses what is probably the biggest one in Britain. There, sparkling and gleaming, is a mighty Chinese National Railways Class KF 4-8-4 locomotive. The 93-foot long behemoth was built in the mid-1930s at the Vulcan Foundry, Newton-le-Willows, to haul 600-ton trains over the mountainous central section of the Canton-Hankow Railway. After 43 years in service the locomotive was presented to the museum by China and it left Shanghai for England in 1981. The sheer size of this monster makes it stand out and it looked to me far and away the biggest in the extensive collection. The engine weighs in at 114.9 tons with a 77-ton tender.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211266, "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": 327, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "302\n\nMind Landscapes enables C. C. Wang to describe the challenges he faced to see paintings in a land without public museums; \"There were no good museums in China at that time and you couldn't see the work of a contemporary painter in a museum or gallery. But since they had to be mounted or remounted, they could be seen in a mounter's shop. Suzhou was famous for its mounters. They would paste the paintings to be mounted on the walls of their shops, and if you walked around every few days, you could always see new paintings.” (p. 15).\n\nMr. Wang also talks about his teachers and how he was able to view various private collections: \"For me, as well as for painter-scholars of the past, friendships with other painters and collectors were extremely significant. Each new meeting meant a new collection to see. In those days private collectors were never publicly displayed. To see a particular painting you had to know the owner.” (p. 17).\n\nWhen the great Chinese Imperial Collection was being prepared for the London Exhibition at Burlington House in 1936, C. C. Wang was a consultant and had a chance to study all those great paintings another significant step in his development into a connoisseur-collector-painter.\n\nCollecting as well as creating paintings soon became young Mr. Wang's principal preoccupation. However, he supported his collecting and his family by some real estate ventures because he was not able to make enough money through the sale of his paintings.\n\nThe story of C. C. Wang's journey to the West (New York) and attending classes at the Art Students League, his explorations of modern Western art and his artistic evolution is marvelously told through well written prose of Jerome Silbergeld, Professor of Art History at the University of Washington in Seattle.\n\nProfessor Silbergeld comes to his subject with a deep knowledge and background in classical Chinese painting and provides a sinological, art historical perspective of C. C. Wang's work. But the author does not avoid his role as contemporary critic, analyzing the relationship of the artist and modern art. When C. C. Wang's breakthrough to his mature style comes in 1971-2, the author allows the events to unfold like high drama. Moreover, throughout the text, the artist is permitted to state his own views on the elements of his art such as line, color, composition, dots, texture,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211534, "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": 251, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "227\n\ncertainly quite old, which proves that these pieces of equipment are durable and have long working lives. That particular one had been in use until after the War.\n\nThe newer of the two hullers was already 35 years old in 1972, and had been made in the village a few years before the War. Its maker was a Hakka man named Tse (i) from Kai Ham (4), one of the villages above Ho Chung in Sai Kung District. He was skilled in their manufacture and had been called in to do the job. This information came from another lady, 71 in 1972, who had come into the village upon her marriage at 25 years of age, about 1926.\n\nMr. Tse first wove the bamboo frame for the huller, and for the base on which the huller sits, and then filled the insides with local earth that was free from sand, stiffened with slivers of bamboo. The earth (PCE) from the hills round Ma Yau Tong was said to be good for this purpose. The earth was then pounded until it became very hard.\n\nThe huller was clearly very heavy, and turning it to separate the husks or hulls from the rice kernels (*) requires a lot of strength. It was usual for two persons, men or women, to operate it, pushing on a wooden handle. The handle was bow-shaped, with a crosspiece at the end against which the operators pushed. (See plate 13). The lower end of the handle fitted into a hole in the beam which turned the huller. This handle was made in the village.\n\nThe (*) was put into the top of the huller, and I was told that both the kernel and the husks came out together from the slightly protruding rim of the grinder onto the ledge below the rim.\n\nThe final piece of information given by the friendly villagers was that the grinder had cost $30: meaning that this was what they had paid Mr. Tse. I don't know how long he had stayed in the village to finish the job, as I forgot to ask this question!\n\nMr. Lawrence Yau, Curator, Regional Services Department, Museums Section has drawn to my attention a description of a rice huller of the same type as the one I saw at Ma Yau Tong in the book Tin Kung Kai Wu (NZM) by Sung Ying-hsing (!) of the Ming dynasty.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212021, "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": 436, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "411\n\nJerome Silbergeld, Mind Landscapes: The Paintings of C.C. Wang, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington Press (Seattle and London), 1987. 132 pp. + plates, bibliography, index.\n\nC.C. Wang is certainly one of the most intriguing Chinese artists of the later twentieth century. His life chronicles cataclysmic changes many Chinese have endured and his path - artist, collector, connoisseur, businessman, and exile - was rarely clear. He was continuously called upon to redefine his relationship with China and the West as he traveled, explored, and matured.\n\nHaving been born into a Suzhou family of mandarins in Imperial China in 1907 and having had a traditional Chinese education till the age of 14 assured young Wang the basis for blossoming into a twentieth-century version of the literati. But young Wang longed for a Western-style education, into which he switched at age fourteen, and from which he went on to study law in Shanghai at China's distinguished Suzhou Law School. But his art education, which started as he learned to read and write, was carried on simultaneously and ever more seriously. Over time, he had many art teachers and, indeed, became a teacher himself at an early age.\n\nMind Landscapes enables C.C. Wang to describe the challenges he faced in seeing paintings in a land without public museums: \"There were no good museums in China at that time, and you couldn't see the work of a contemporary painter in a museum or gallery. But since they had to be mounted or remounted, they could be seen in a mounter's shop. Suzhou was famous for its mounters. They would paste the paintings to be mounted on the walls of their shops, and if you walked around every few days, you could always see new paintings,\" (p. 15).\n\nMr. Wang also talks about his teachers and how he was able to view various private collections: \"For me, as well as for painter-scholars of the past, friendships with other painters and collectors were extremely significant. Each new meeting meant a new collection to see. In those days, private collections were never publicly displayed. To see a particular painting, you had to know the owner,\" (p. 17).\n\nWhen the great Chinese Imperial Collection was being prepared for the London Exhibition at Burlington House in 1936, C.C. Wang was a consultant and had a chance to study all those great paintings — another", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212071, "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": 13, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "object of encouraging an active interest in East Asia, and in particular China, through the medium of lectures and discussions and by publishing an annual Journal”. These objectives must always be borne in mind and so it was particularly gratifying to see that the Hong Kong Standard thought we were worthy of space in their special 150th anniversary issue on the Foundation of Hong Kong, published late last year: I am grateful to Carl Smith for writing this article and to see that it brought forth many favourable comments. It is interesting to note that in spite of a 112 year gap in our history the influence of the Royal Asiatic Society is very much in evidence.\n\nThis evidence can also be seen in other areas. I would hesitate to call this Society a watchdog for the History of Hong Kong but nevertheless we are concerned about matters which could erode the historical heritage of our local community. For this reason the Council thought it appropriate to write to the Urban Council urging them to think again about the proposed charges for entering museums under their control; this is a new departure for the Urban Council and we will inform you in due course whether our representations make any headway. Again, whilst the Society does not have direct representation on the Antiquities Advisory Board, (a matter of some controversy), there are three members of the Council on the Board and we are therefore in some position to make our views known. We have also at their request written to the Government about the conservation and rescue programme for the area affected by the Airport and Lantau Port Study Areas.\n\nFinally I would like to turn to the future. Whether 1997 was on the horizon or not a Society such as ours needs to ensure that it continues to meet the aspirations of its members, have an active and interesting programme, a Journal which is worthy of the best, and that we are in a position to make our contribution within our objectives to the community at large. The Society was asked to comment by OMELCO on the Bill of Rights and we responded by emphasising the need for real freedoms, as opposed to paper ones and that such conditions in the Bill of Rights should also be included in or be in accord with the Basic Law when it comes into force: in particular, members of Council agreed on the need for freedom of academic research and that there should be no diminution of existing access to government and other records. We shall continue to watch developments, but if we are to succeed in continuing as a viable and active society we will\n\nxii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212111, "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": 53, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "30\n\n26\n\nfestivals in the New Territories. Besides Faure's 1986 book The Structure of Chinese Rural Society which touched on the festival, printed work by local scholars arising from these studies is yet to appear.\n\n27\n\nTwo museums, first the History Museum of Hong Kong, and later the Sam Tung Uk Regional Council Museum, have taken photos and videos of the festivals since 1983, following Mr. Hugh Gibb's film of the Ha Tsuen Jiao, taken in 1974. However, only the Jiao festival in Cheung Chau and the 1985 Kam Tin festival have been fully recorded. These are not as yet available in print.\n\nFollowing the sad deaths of Prof. Ward and Dr. Lu, the 1980s also saw the quick decline in interest in Jiao festivals in Hong Kong. This is, perhaps, due to two not completely unrelated reasons: firstly, Jiao festivals in Hong Kong are studied only for their contribution towards the understanding of rural society. Therefore, when a researcher changes his interest to societies of another locality, study of Jiao festivals in Hong Kong becomes irrelevant. Another reason perhaps is a matter of \"time\". Whether it is a diachronic or synchronic study, or even an independent ethnographical report, the physical demands of observing a Jiao are often considerable. Planning for a Jiao festival may take one whole year, starting from fixing the date and selection of representative worshippers to the final purification of the community and households rituals. Moreover, if one intends to observe Jiao festivals held at different times, a long term commitment and interest is necessary since many Jiao festivals in the New Territories are celebrated only once in ten years. A comprehensive study of Jiao festivals cannot be done by a short term survey.\n\nDuring my visits to two Jiao celebrations in 1990 (Lam Tsuen and Fanling), the only other researchers I met were a scholar from the Music department of the CUHK, and some members of an amateur research group.\n\nb. Sources\n\n24\n\n+4\n\n-\n\nSchipper noted that [Jiao festival] simply was ignored in the writings of the bureaucracy, and remained an immensely important factor in the lives of the common people ....29 Studies of Jiao festivals in Hong Kong have so far depended heavily on ethnography", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212703, "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-1992", "page_number": 12, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "Chinese Painting & Caligraphy\n\nArmoured Cars in the Battle of Hong Kong\n\nTC Lại\n\nArren Leung\n\nInheritance and the Chinese Lineage\n\nHugh Baker\n\nFrom the Common Por\n\nJames Watson\n\nNo Environmental Myopia at Mai Po\n\nDick Irving &\n\nDavid Melville\n\nFeng Shut\n\nDavid Shru\n\nThe Woman as a Symbol in Judaeo-Christian\n\n& Hindu Buddhist Traditions\n\nCaroline Muar &\n\nRajeshwari Ghose\n\nGood lectures however can rarely be carried out unless there is a reasonable venue and the technical aspects are in place. Fortunately, as members will know we have an excellent relationship with the Urban Council which not only sponsors our talks, but provides us with a very well fitted out room, and I would like to record our sincere thanks for the council's unstinting co-operation.\n\nI would now like to turn to the second of our area of activities; the Journal and the Library. To produce an annual journal as we do is a very time-consuming business and throughout the history of the Society we have been particularly fortunate to have had a line of very distinguished editors, Professor Crammer-Byng, Professor James Lui, Dr. James Hayes, our immediate past president, Dr. David Faure, and one who has done it since 1982, Dr. Patrick Hase. We do owe a great deal to Patrick who assures me that the 1990 Journal will be out very shortly, (we are waiting for the final version of the 30th anniversary lecture given by Dr. Wang Gungwu) and the 1991 Journal will, it is hoped be out by the end of the year.\n\nLast year I reported to you that I hoped to be able to report more encouragingly on the move of the Library from its present location in the rather inaccessible Kowloon Central Library, to a special collection room in the reorganised City Hall Central Library. I am pleased to say that this is now likely to happen in the foreseeable future probably by the end of the year. This is something we have been working on for sometime and it is particularly gratifying that it is now becoming a reality: our thanks go to Mrs. Barbara Luk, Assistant Director Museums and\n\nX", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212704, "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-1992", "page_number": 13, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "Libraries who have been chiefly responsible for making this possible. You will note the Librarian has tabled a short report on the Library: it is a very fine collection and I hope that interested members will make good use of it in its new location.\n\nBefore I leave the subject of journals and libraries, may I report to you that the Council has decided that it would be appropriate to bring out a 35th anniversary publication, which falls in 1995. No final decision has been taken on the contents of this publication, but it could take the form of the \"Going and Gone\" series, where there was a large photographic input: Dr. Elizabeth Sinn, one of our Vice-Presidents, is in charge of this project and I am sure she would welcome any ideas from members.\n\nAnd finally, I come to the last of our activities, i.e., the watchdog role, and this can take many forms, either of a negative or a positive nature. We are still concerned about the charging of an entrance fee to several local museums, whereas they were free before, since this does discourage the local public from entering, if the latest figures are anything to go by. We continue to assist the Government Antiquities Advisory Board, in that three members of your Council are on this Board, and we provide nearly 20 members to assist in the grading of buildings. One Council member, Dr. Dan Waters, has been largely responsible for this, and again I would like to place on record our sincere thanks to him and his team. More recently, we have become very concerned at the proposed move of the more accessible part of the Government's Public Record Office. For those who do not know, this is at present on the second floor of the Murray Road Car Park and is in a very convenient location for those who wish to research Hong Kong history. It is a mine of information, and the Government's proposal to move it to an inaccessible and unsuitable industrial estate in Tuen Mun without any consultation does appear to be a very retrograde step in the light of its avowed objective to make government more open and transparent. We have written to our Patron on the matter, and although we have received a reply, the current position is not at all satisfactory, and we will be taking the matter further. I should add that we are not alone in our representations — all the heads of the tertiary institutions have also written, backed up by many academics. It is hoped that a more conciliatory outcome can be reported to you.\n\nYou will notice that I have left to last any reference to finance and membership. Our Treasurer, Mr. Robert Nield, will report to you on the state of our finances: briefly, he will report on a satisfactory position.\n\nXI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213352, "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": 174, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "157\n\nIn addition, a number of articles and books came out of the project, including Ng Jun Ngai-ha's \"Village education in transition: the case of Sheung Shui\", and David Faure's \"Sai Kung: The Making of the District and its Experience during World War II\".25 Faure's book on the Eastern New Territories, based partly on these findings, appeared in 1986.26 The Project, both in the data collected and the interpretative writings arising from it, has significantly enhanced our understanding of traditional Chinese village life and the New Territories, elevating local history to new levels of sophistication. In particular, unlike the mainstream Chinese historians of a previous generation, Faure and others no longer look at the New Territories, or even South China, from the Great Tradition perspective, but tend to underline local culture and try to resolve the paradox between unity and diversity in Chinese culture.27\n\nInstitutional histories\n\nLocal history has also been enriched by a proliferation of institutional histories from the 1970s onwards by commercial and non-commercial institutions which were beginning to celebrate their 60th, 70th... 100th anniversaries. In the course of producing the story of these institutions, be they banks, schools, churches, temples, trading companies, charitable organizations, hospitals, even private medical practices and government organizations, much information about Hong Kong on a micro-level has been uncovered. In cases where documents are lacking, and especially when a more lively approach is required, old people associated with these institutions are interviewed, yielding extremely valuable data. It is amusing that so often, the institutions themselves have no idea what a wealth of materials is sitting in their back rooms until the commissioned author starts rummaging through them. Unfortunately, histories of institutions are not generally available to the public, but in most cases they will be supplied upon request.\n\nPopularizing Local History: Museums and the Antiquities and Monuments Office\n\nUntil the 1970s, the study of local history really involved an exclusive group of scholars, albeit growing in numbers, holding dialogue among themselves. There was little public demand for local history, and very little access to it. However, from the 1970s, things began to change.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213353, "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "158\n\nOn the one hand, government/semi-government institutions began to promote an awareness of local history and conservation of Hong Kong's heritage. We may see this as part of the government's 'community building' effort after the devastating riots of 1967. On the other hand, the demographics of Hong Kong have also changed. In the past, with their high mobility, people residing in Hong Kong had little sense of identity with the place. This led the Governor, Sir Alexander Grantham, to compare Hong Kong in the 1960s to a railway station; as people came, made money and moved on, it was a place with no roots. By the 1970s, things were no longer so. The generation which has grown up in the Territory after the war were much more rooted in the place and in the 1970s, as they came of age, they grew more curious about the history of their home city. A few actively sought knowledge through study and research; most of the others became willing customers of anything that might tell them more about Hong Kong.\n\nInstitutionally, one focus of growth in the study of local history is the museums, the other, the Antiquities and Monuments Office (AMO).\n\n## Museums\n\nHong Kong's museums are run by the two municipal councils, the Urban Council and the Regional Council, which, besides being responsible for sanitation services, liquor licences and so on, are also responsible for enriching the quality of life in Hong Kong through promoting and providing recreation, sports and the arts.\n\nTo give local history greater prominence, the Museum of History was separated out from the Urban Council's City Hall Museum and Art Gallery in 1975. At first, it operated only on a small scale, using rented premises in a multi-storeyed commercial building. In 1983, it moved into its own building, and subsequent extensions enlarged its exhibition area to 1520 sq m. A permanent exhibition, called the Story of Hong Kong, outlining 6,000 years of development from the Stone Age to modern times, was installed. It also stages thematic exhibitions from time to time: last year (1995), two out of three exhibitions were about Hong Kong; Hong Kong's Traditional Trades and Crafts, and Life Under the Japanese Occupation, 1941-45. The Museum runs two branch museums, the Law Uk Folk Museum, which is restored from a 19th century Hakka house, and the Lei Cheng Uk Branch Museum, which is centred on an excavated Eastern Han", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213354, "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "159\n\nThe Museum of History is also planning a museum of coastal defence of the Hong Kong region, to be built at the site of the former Lei Yue Mun fort,\n\nThe Regional Council runs three historical museums. The first was the Sam Tung Uk Museum, housed in a restored Hakka walled village built in 1786. It was opened in 1987 as a folk museum specializing in the history of Hong Kong's rural areas. The Railway Museum is centred on an old railway station, and the Sheung Yiu Folk Museum is housed in an old fortified Hakka village.\n\nTogether, the museums are the main venues where ordinary citizens, not to mention tourists, can learn about Hong Kong's past.\n\nClearly it is not just exhibits that make a museum. Research is indispensable to provide support for any exhibition. The steady expansion of museums in the last decade had entailed much research input both by the museum staff and by commissioned researchers. The Museum of History, for example, in preparing for the opening of the museum of coastal defence, is busy sourcing for military items such as medals, guns, uniforms and so forth. At the same time, it is also conducting a full-scale two-year oral history project interviewing both civilians and military personnel on the Japanese invasion and the occupation period, to support the effort.\n\nAntiquities and Monuments Office\n\n10\n\nAnother centre of local history research is the Antiquities and Monuments Office. Founded in 1976 initially to conduct archaeological work and conserve historical monuments, its work has become more diversified in the last few years. Through exhibitions, guided tours, publications, local studies and community involvement projects, it has helped to spread the message of heritage conservation. But, as in the case of the museums, its work cannot be done without research, and it is now also commissioning researchers to back up its routine work and special projects.\n\nTogether, through publication, activities and exhibitions, the publicizing of local history by the museums and the AMO is being carried out with increasing efficiency and on a growing scale. All these activities, however, have placed great demands on those working on local history.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213356, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "161\n\nrepackaged for publication by commercial presses. They are made more readable and illustrations are added. Those repackaged as guidebooks to historical monuments and historical sites, adding practical information on how to get there, are particularly popular.\n\nPublishing for the general public was also stimulated by the District Boards, established in 1982, now 19 in number, each vying to promote the district and inculcate a sense of community. Each Board commissions authors to write the district's history, and because of its regional nature, residents in the district are persuaded to donate old photographs and documents and supply information, which have helped to enrich the content of the books. District Board inspired activities, such as exhibitions and the collection of folk songs, have also helped to give a new connotation to the word 'local' and the idea of 'local history'\n\nThe museums, AMO and the District Boards publish bilingually, and this seems to meet the demand of the general reader in Hong Kong.\n\nMainland Chinese Writers\n\nIn the early 1980s, when talks began between China and Great Britain on the return of Hong Kong to China, interest in Hong Kong history emerged from another quarter - Mainland China. Several centres to study Hong Kong and Macao were set up in Beijing and Guangzhou, and later Shanghai. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing leads the study on Hong Kong, and has produced a number of quality academic works In Guangzhou, the leading light in Hong Kong history research was Jin Yingxi, until his death in 1991. A graduate of the King's College (secondary) and the University of Hong Kong, Professor Jin displayed a rare sensitivity toward Hong Kong society throughout his work, and his proficiency in English also enabled him to use English sources more effectively than most other Mainland historians.\n\nMainland academic historians tend to write about Hong Kong's political development and its place in Sino-British diplomacy rather than local history as such. But they have also produced some micro-studies. 15 As a whole, their works have helped to stimulate interest among both Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese readers. \"Hong Kong mania\" which was supposed to have swept the Mainland in the early 1980s also helped to create a market for works on Hong Kong history written both by Mainland and Hong Kong scholars.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213358, "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "163\n\nProblems\n\nSo far I have been dwelling mostly on the progress of the study of local history, but that is not to imply that there are no problems.\n\nThe truth is, there is still a lot of local history waiting to be done urgently. There are villages, streets, institutions, trades, interesting and significant personalities that are hardly documented. There are archives to be discovered, records to be catalogued and indexed, folk tales and personal accounts to be recorded. There are myths to be debunked. In face of rapid urbanization and large-scale emigration — and always, old people dying — we are losing materials at an alarming rate.\n\nUnlike most other places, Hong Kong's problem is not money. In fact, there is now ready money offered to fund research. The budget for the new Museum of History is HK$580 million (approx. US$74m) and for the Heritage Museum, HK$772 million (approx. US$98m), so there will be plenty to pay for research. Academics can, moreover, apply for funds from the University Grants Committee which seems to favour projects related to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Jockey Club has been a consistent donor to projects related to heritage, and other local bodies such as District Boards have funded publications. In addition, there is the Wilson Heritage Trust Fund, named after the former governor Lord Wilson of Tillyorn and set up in 1992 to promote the preservation and conservation of Hong Kong's human heritage. To date, it has funded television programmes, conferences, student projects and a wide range of other activities.\n\nThe problem is not so much money as manpower. Some of the pioneers of local history such as Barbara Ward and Lo Hsiang-lin have passed away. A number of experienced scholars have retired and emigrated, or have left Hong Kong universities to teach elsewhere. In a way, this is not a total loss, for David Faure and Bernard Luk are actually taking Hong Kong studies to Oxford and Toronto where they now teach. But the fact is that they are not here and can no longer supervise the kind of fieldwork they did in the late 1970s and early 1980s.\n\nThe sudden surge in demand for researchers created by the rapid expansion of the Museums and the Antiquities and Monuments Office both highlights and aggravates the problem of manpower shortage. One obvious example is while the AMO has been granted a donation of\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213359, "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": 181, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "164\n\nover HK$4 million to do a Territory-wide survey of historical buildings almost a year ago, work has yet to start partly because they are unable to line up enough qualified people to lead the survey (the Heritage Museum will be flying in scholars to help with its exhibitions - one a Canadian anthropologist who has been doing work in Hong Kong on and off since the 1960s, and the other an English design historian who returned to teach in the UK four years ago).\n\nThere are simply not enough bodies! The same 10 historians or so are burdened with research projects; advising the museums and AMO, advising radio and television programmes, exhibitions, even film; being interviewed by local and international newspapers; adjudicating photo competitions and students' projects; designing teaching materials for secondary schools; besides doing a full-time job of teaching and administration! Although a number of postgraduate students have written on Hong Kong history for their degree, many became secondary school teachers, civil servants, joined the private sectors, even the museum system as administrators, rather than pursue a career in research.\n\nThe problem is, unlike England for example, there is no army of amateur local historians (or local history societies) who study their own parish, church, village, street... as a hobby. In Hong Kong, local history is much more a consumer item than a participatory item. Despite the increased participation in projects by school and university students in the last decade or so, there is little sustained effort after the project is completed, few taking the initiative to continue research as a hobby. Thus, the main burden still falls upon those few scholars, every one of whom is spread desperately thin. There is a yawning gap, and what is missing is what we might call 'middle management' - budding scholars who can take on a project independently, without the supervision of a more senior scholar.\n\nOne worries also that the glamour of the marketplace might lure scholars away from serious scholarship. Why bother with painstaking collection and analysis of materials, criticism of text and interpretation of data when all one has to do is tell a good story to sell books? How does one strike a balance between pursuing serious research, which is almost by definition esoteric and exclusive, and serving the public?\n\nThere is another minor problem: items for research are now becoming much more difficult to come by. One effect of the growing popularity of...", "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", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213940, "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": 10, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "A. Trevor Clark, C.B.E., L.V.O., M.A., F.S.A.Scot., served in Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service in Nigeria, and then in Hong Kong from 1960 to 1977, being seconded to the Western Pacific for constitutional duties from 1972. Since retirement to Britain he has been an elected local government councillor, and a member of non-departmental public bodies and trusts, especially museums, and has contributed book reviews on Hong Kong affairs to various publications.\n\nDan Waters, M.Phil., Ph.D is a retired Assistant Director of Education of the Hong Kong Government. He is a long-time Member of Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (HKSARBRAS) and became President in 1997, having acted since the year before. He has written prolifically on the history and culture of the HKSAR.\n\nKeith Stevens, B.A., served with the British Army and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office before his retirement in 1991. He is an authority on Chinese temples and deities, and Chinese history generally, and has written prolifically on these subjects.\n\nJennifer W. Welch, M.A. now lives with her husband in Hong Kong having spent a number of years in Singapore, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Australia. Her interests are varied and include French culture and language, China and the Chinese, porcelain and history.\n\nKwok-shing CHAN is a post-graduate student at the Department of Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.\n\nThomas Kvan, M.A., M.Arch., is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Architecture, University of Hong Kong.\n\nJustyna Karakiewicz, A.A. Dipl., F.R.S.A., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, University of Hong Kong and an urban designer who has designed towns and landscapes in Malta, France and England, amongst others.\n\nix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213978, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "12\n\nHealth were listed provision & operation of maternity homes, ante- & post-natal clinics and health visiting. Under Education came provision & operation of primary & secondary schools, adult education & evening institutes. Under Welfare were recreational facilities, youth clubs, community centres, sports facilities, public swimming pools, homes for the aged, infants' crêches, refuges for street sleepers, distribution of relief, entertainment (band concerts, Chinese drama & opera), pleasure grounds, playgrounds and bathing beaches. The Miscellaneous category added declaration of one-way streets, parking zones, closing of streets as playgrounds (after consultation with Police), traffic warden services, provision & management of car parks, amenity provision (eg public fountains & tree planting), museums & art galleries, and undertaking of functions (such as collection of water rates & various fees) as agents of the central government.\n\nThis list went much farther in involvement of representative bodies in the affairs which closely and legitimately concerned the ordinary man and woman in the street, as well as extending what was already delegated to the Urban Council into most of the colony's growth areas. Apart from suggesting that the list might be added to in the light of experience, the bold proposition was made that in future no central department should be permitted to establish new local machinery without proving that the activity could not be carried out by a Local Authority. The report stated that it was not envisaged that the new councils should be independent Education Authorities; but it was clearly hoped that in the fullness of time the Education Department would regard local authority schools as a main component of the grant-aided system, and indeed relinquish its own primary schools to the councils. Finally, as a carrot for those in the NT who might be willing to contemplate change, it was pointed out that rural district councils should take over agricultural extension schemes, forestry lots, fish-ponds, local public works (footpaths, bridges, piers etc), local ferries, village layouts & housing schemes, and local water supplies & irrigation.\n\nThis would all have to be paid for. Local authorities should have financial responsibility, including revenue-raising powers. Local accountability to tax-payers and freedom from stifling dependency on central grants (with their inevitable consequential frictions) were essential to success. New structures would increase the administrative costs of the colony overall, and it might well be that some areas would", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214308, "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": 166, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "130\n\nalready full. So off they went again across the Pacific by sea to Manila, Hong Kong and Shanghai before setting out for Cape Town where they remained for five months. They finally returned to Washington having stayed in Buenos Aires for a month en route. Back in Washington they found that he was still unable to obtain a residence permit. However, someone pointed out the small print that as a dependent of his wife they would be allowed to stay and there they remained for the next six years until Sowerby died on the 16th of August 1954 at the age of sixty-nine. His last years were confined to his sickroom from which he continued his researches and writing.\n\nFor some twenty-five years of his life he lived in Shanghai, through its heyday, and for fourteen years he produced and published a creditable monthly periodical, the China Journal, aimed at ‘educating' Westerners in China to appreciate many of the aspects of Chinese civilisation and life under headings - Science, Art, Literature and Travel. It was to \"encourage an active enthusiasm for the powerful and often enigmatic Chinese self-contained culture,\" though the Journal not only pursued interests concerned with culture and the Chinese social environment it also pursued the major leisure activities available in China - hunting, shooting and fishing - all subjects close to Sowerby's heart. His primary interest centred on the collection of scientific and geological specimens for museums in Britain and the United States, as well as retaining some specimens for a unique museum in Shanghai.\n\nThe bimonthly Journal was originally titled The China Journal of Science and Arts, and edited by Arthur de C. Sowerby [Science] and John C. Ferguson, PhD [Literature and Arts]. Clarice Moise BA began as the Assistant-Editor and Manager but later simply became the Manager. We know nothing of Ferguson whose name continued on the editorial staff until the late 1930s. The first issue, No. 1 of Volume 1 was issued in January 1923 with a primitive sketch on the cover designed by A de C. S showing a mounted T'ang horseman, a dragon and bats. At first, the journal was based at 103 Ben Building at 23 Avenue Eduard VII in the French Concession though later, by 1928, its offices had moved to 8 Museum Street in Shanghai. The cover was changed in 1926, again designed by ‘A de C S', to a cross-legged Buddhist deity with his palms held together in front of his chest in prayer, with a flaming nimbus behind him and sitting on a pedestal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215714, "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": 13, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "1861) is both a tour de force and riveting, to boot. Ch'ëa was the keeper of a temple at Poklo. He was visited in 1856 by two colporteurs from Hong Kong who left him with a bible. On reading it, he was almost immediately converted to Christianity and was later baptised in Hong Kong becoming, essentially, a disciple of James Legge. He returned to Poklo where he pursued his faith with great, if not excessive, zeal, becoming an object of suspicion and hatred in many quarters. In October 1861 he was seized by a local vigilante squad, tortured, ordered to renounce his faith - which he refused to do - and was ultimately beheaded.\n\nStephen Selby's interesting account of archery in China from the pre-Shang period to the end of the 19th century mirrors the excellent address that he recently gave to the Society.\n\nThe indefatigable Keith Stevens takes us on a voyage of discovery into the history of Zhenjiang. As always the illustrations are wonderful.\n\nAnd Dan Waters reminisces about Hong Kong in the post-War years.\n\nThere are a total of 18 NOTES AND QUERIES on a wide variety of subjects. Paul Bolding gives us some insights into the life of the intrepid Belgium aviator, Louis de San - who he ultimately met in 1988 with some interesting photographs. There is an amusing 1905 Christmas card from Arnold Graham - that great benefactor of the HKBRAS Library - and an account of the Library by our Hon. Librarian, Julia Chan. Peter Hansell discusses the famous clock maker Douglas Lapraik. Paul Harrison writes penetratingly on the highly unusual subject of restoring artefacts for display in Hong Kong's museums. Bob Horsnell continues his highly interesting pieces on old military installations. David Mahoney provides further insights into the Chinese Labour Corps in France during World War I. Martin Merz adds another follow up to Solomon's Bard's TEA AND OPIUM advising that Chinese and Indian teas are, essentially, the same (we live and learn!). Robert Nield's beautiful photographs of Bhutan which I messed up in Volume 41 are now reproduced in all their glory. I'll leave you to read The wrestling princes by Keith Stevens (a little suspense will do no harm). Peter Stuckey and Chris Bailey take us to St. John's (Shangchuan) Island to the southwest of Hong Kong where St. Francis Xavier died in 1552 (not, as I originally thought when skimming through the article,\n\niv", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "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?'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216153, "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": 452, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "386\n\nNo, I cannot. Carbon-14 dating is a much specialised skill in its own right, performed by instrumental scientists. But conservators need to study it because otherwise we might, by careless treatment of samples, invalidate them, rendering them unfit for testing.\n\nE\n\nThere are three aspects to conservation.\n\nPreventative conservation\n\nFirstly, we can create the right environment for the artefact to slow down its degradation. So that, ideally, the artefact will not need to be treated individually in the laboratory. There are many agents of decay. But the main factors that we are concerned with are light, including ultraviolet radiation, humidity, pollutants, insects and moulds.\n\nHave you wondered why buildings such as the Hong Kong Museum of Art in Tsim Sha Tsui have wonderful urban views but only a small number of windows to enjoy them from? It is because the strength of the sun varies throughout the day and the particular season, and conservators prefer many museum artefacts to be limited in terms of the amount of light that they are exposed to, and certainly not to damaging ultraviolet light. Conservators joke that they would prefer the galleries inside museums to be pitch black; low levels of lighting are usually the result of conservators trying to prolong an artefact's existence.\n\nHumidity is complicated and harder to control, metals need humidity to rust but if we dry the air too much, composite items will crack as they dry up. Keeping an artefact at a low state of humidity in the tropics requires a high degree of maintenance. High humidity causes many artefacts to go mouldy and become more susceptible to insect attack. A rapidly changing humidity is very damaging to wood and ivory artefacts; it can make them crack or in the case of ivory even explode.\n\nThere are many types of pollutant and these can damage different types of artefacts. The pollutant may come from the external\n\nI [Hon. Ed. - A long-lived naturally occurring radioactive carbon isotope of mass 14, used in carbon dating and as a tracer in biochemistry.]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216154, "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": 453, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "387\n\nenvironment (mostly the burning of fossil fuels to produce oxides of nitrogen and sulphur) or from something in the museum, such as the wood or paint imperceptibly deteriorating and emitting gases.\n\nTo reduce the amount of pollution, conservators test materials, chemically, to see if they are emitting pollutants. There are measures to reduce the amount of pollution emitted such as painting or encasing the material with impermeable sheeting. To get around these problems the latest generation of display cases are made of metal and glass. At the time of writing these cases can be seen at the Museum of Art exhibiting gold and jade artefacts in the first floor exhibition gallery. The cases can only be opened with a special lock, the air within the case is cleaned and the humidity controlled to a set level, with machinery that is inside the case, below the artefacts.\n\nInsects are a source of constant needed vigilance for us; discretely placed around the museums are traps similar to those bought at supermarkets and they monitor fauna. An insect outbreak at a museum is a matter of serious concern because the food source is often likely to be an artefact. Also because insects inside museums are not subject to natural selection, i.e. survival of the fittest, having regard to the amount of food available, they are likely to thrive at the artefact's expense.\n\nConservators also have a key role in teaching curators the basics of conservation.\n\nActive conservation\n\nWe call controlling the above problems preventative conservation, but we also have to do active preservation work on particular artefacts. This is hard to describe succinctly as conservators get such a variety of artefacts to work upon, suffering from a wide range of problems and which can only be cured by applying one of many different methods. This is one reason that the author finds his profession so enjoyable.\n\nConservators have a very influential role in the history of an artefact being worked upon and the profession has developed a range of professional ethics. Some of these are:\n\n2 But the author has probably broken most of these rules though, at one time or another.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "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": 216487, "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": 246, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "196\n\nIn a letter to Cornell Plant's younger brother Charles, he wrote Their deaths create a great gap in the Upper River community life and your brother's experience was so great and his work up here consequently so good that it is impossible to adequately replace him.\n\nAcknowledgements\n\nMany thanks are due for the research carried out by AC Bromfield and Rosemary Lee and the information provided by the Melik Society and the National Maritime Museums at Greenwich and Falmouth. I am also most grateful for the help and advice provided by the many other Plant enthusiasts around the world, in particular Fraser Stuart of Aberdeen and John Parkinson of Johannesburg.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]