[
    {
        "id": 211615,
        "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": 30,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "Cinema, at North Point (constructed in the early 1950s), is suspended; or the English style, Kentish-Rag, stone retaining wall on the south side of Battery Path in Central. One wonders if the latter was commissioned by some homesick Englishman.\n\nAnd, while parts of the Territory have been disparagingly called \"concrete jungle”, there are modern structures of merit. Depending on your taste, the St. John's Building (Lower Peak-Tram Station), Admiralty Centre; and the Macau Ferry Terminal spring to mind. The foyer at the Landmark, and the high-rise, high-tech Exchange Square, with its \"electronic plumbing\" so tenants can plug in for centralised computer services, are also of merit. Other recently completed buildings show an impressive degree of distinction and aesthetic sensitivity.\n\nIn an article written by Doctor Alan Birch in 1978, previously Reader in History at Hong Kong University, he stated that 95 per cent of the Territory's buildings had been erected from 1946 onwards (even if the deterioration of some belies their age). Although that was probably a very approximate estimate, since then many more old buildings have been torn down. Hong Kong is a city-state where, with the exception of the plot on which Saint John's Cathedral stands (which is freehold), all land is leasehold held from the Crown: this demands that landholders maximise their income from the land in as short a time as possible.\n\nTo give some idea how dramatically the skyline has changed: until World War II the seven-storey Peninsula Hotel, on the Kowloon waterfront, which served as the Japanese army headquarters during the occupation, was considered tall. Since then, the skyline has changed dramatically every decade.\n\nCatherine II (Catherine the Great) (1729-96), Empress of Russia, who together with her many architects erected royal palaces and public buildings, said that building was a disease, like alcoholism. Not too dissimilarly, in Hong Kong, Aw Boon Haw, the son of a Chinese herbalist, who together with his brother, Boon Par, produced the famous \"cure-all\", Tiger Balm, was told by a sooth-sayer that he would lose his fortune and die if he stopped building. When he eventually departed he had erected 26 castles around Asia, as well as the well-known Tiger Balm Gardens in both Singapore and Hong Kong. These, which contain figures depicting stories in Chinese history or mythology, were built to promote Aw's well-known pharmaceutical products.\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212328,
        "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": 270,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "247\n\n―\n\nand Godown Company. 'Monuments' still standing include the Helena May Institute (completed 1916), Saint Andrew's Church (foundation stone laid 1904) and Church Hall, and the Peninsula Hotel (official opening 1928) which — along with the Taj Mahal in Bombay, Raffles in Singapore and a few others was classified, before World War II, as one of the 'great hotels of the East'. Another of Leigh and Orange's edifices is the main, 'Renaissance' style, building at Hong Kong University which was completed in 1912 and extended in 1952. It has been gazetted as an historical monument. The now demolished Sir Paul Chater's 'Marble Hall', generally accepted as the most luxurious residence in Hong Kong before World War II, was another example.\n\nThe Colony's first, full-time, chartered accountant was Arthur Lowe, who came to Hong Kong in 1902. Joseph Bingham became his partner in 1905, and Frederick Mathews (Lowe, Bingham and Mathews) in 1909. There were other accountants in the Territory before 1902, but few had professional qualifications and auditing was usually a subsidiary activity to their main lines of business. For instance, Linstead and Davis were mainly property agents, but they also sold bicycles, and, up to 1926, they had an agency for Manila cigars. The partners audited the accounts of various companies. The senior partner of Gibb Livingston was one of the two Hong Kong Bank auditors, and so on.\n\nLowe Bingham (Lo Bing Ham in Chinese) became part of the international firm of Price Waterhouse in 1974,\n\nHong Kong and China Gas Company\n\nWilliam Glen, who had no knowledge of the gas industry in 1861, obtained from the then Governor, Sir Hercules Robinson (when the population was 123,281), a concession to supply gas to the city of Victoria. The company was incorporated on May 31st 1862: most of the shareholders lived in the United Kingdom, although 500 shares were offered locally.\n\nThen, on December 3rd 1864, Hong Kong was lit with gas for the first time by about 15 miles of mains and 500 lamps, in Queen's Road extending up the hill to Upper Albert Road. Previously, the only street lights had been installed voluntarily by residents, and burned peanut oil. The residents of Caine Road complained that they\n\n---\n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    }
]