[ { "id": 207024, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "Fr. ERNESTO GHERZI, S.J.\n\n89\n\nfirst meeting of the International Meteorological Organization's Regional Association II which was held at Hong Kong in January 1937.*\n\nIn May 1949 he attended the Conference on Storm Warning Procedures at Manila, which established relevant definitions, standards and procedures for the World Meteorological Organization. However, the revolution in China and its associated nationalism had overtaken Zikawei (1947) and he was refused permission to return to China. The then Director of the Royal Observatory Hong Kong, Mr Heywood, found a place for Fr Gherzi on the staff and he worked there until asked by the Portuguese authorities to help reorganise and equip the Macau Observatory.\n\nWhile in Hong Kong, he finished his two-volume work on the 'Meteorology of China'. Certain sections of the draft manuscript, particularly those on tropical cyclones, were hotly disputed by some staff members and led to much animated discussion. The volumes were eventually published in Macau in 1951 and whilst they suffer, in places, from being out of date and lacking in accuracy—Fr Gherzi's notes remained in China—the books were a good record of the climatology of the Far East and of the experiences of himself and others in typhoons.\n\nIt was during the years that Fr Gherzi spent in Hong Kong and Macau that I was fortunate enough to get to know him quite well. He was a competent organist and after work I would sometimes accompany him to the Rosary Church to listen to his playing—Bach was a favourite—or he would come to my quarters to hear records and take a considerable number of glasses of sherry—his preferred drink. He was game for most activities and his majestic figure often looked out of place in the rudimentary sports car or sailing junk that I used in those days. Over the years, Fr Gherzi developed a technique of using cocktail parties to good advantage; on joining them he would charge his glass with sherry and, whilst stroking his grandee's beard, look for the most senior naval person present. He would then disarmingly engage the poor fellow in typhoon talk and eventually succeed in getting him to donate a radar or other piece of electronic equipment of which the good Father was in need.\n\n*This paragraph records two 'firsts' for Hong Kong in the field of international meteorology. Hong Kong is a member of the World Meteorological Organization in its own right on account of these early developments.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207162, "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": 233, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n227 \n\nyears excellent education for girls. On a visit to Europe in 1874, the Vicar Apostolic of Hong Kong took the occasion to invite the Christian Brothers to come to Hong Kong and assume responsibility for St. Saviour's School. They are a teaching Order founded by Jean Baptiste de la Salle (1651-1719). His statue made by Mr. Auguste Vannini, a former Hong Kong resident, stands in front of La Salle College.\n\nThe first contingent of Brothers arrived in June, 1875. In 1876 they reorganised St. Saviour's into a school for the education of Portuguese only and renamed it St. Joseph's College. A property was bought at the north-west corner of Caine Road and Aberdeen Street. With more space it was possible to open a class for Chinese in 1878. The capable administration of the school by the Brothers brought increased enrolment and resultant overcrowding. When the Church in 1881 bought 'Glenealy', the property where the Cathedral is now located, the Brothers moved into the house on the site and classes were held in temporary matsheds and out-buildings, while a new school building was being built. In September, 1882, the new school was opened on Robinson Road. St. Joseph's by gradual transition beginning at the close of the first World War moved to its present location on Kennedy Road. Initially, it occupied the premises there of the Club Germania,\n\nIn 1917, St. Joseph's College opened a branch school on Chatham Road in Kowloon. The boys in the upper forms were sent to finish their education at the main school on Hong Kong Island. This was not an altogether satisfactory arrangement. Father Aimar, Principal of the College, and Father Spada, parish priest of Holy Rosary Church, Chatham Road, anticipated the growth of Kowloon. In 1924 they looked over the peninsula for suitable sites for the future needs of the Church. Brother Aimar bought ten acres from Government for $120,000 in a sparsely settled area. A nearby site was also acquired upon which was built St. Theresa's Church in 1932.\n\nAt the time, the wisdom of buying these sites was questioned by those who considered them both too extensive and too remote from the centre of population in Kowloon. A description of the area was published in an early issue of The Lasallite:\n\nThe north-eastern portion of the estate must have been used at some time as a burial-ground, as well over a thousand graves had to be removed by the care of the Tung Wah Hospital", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211614, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "Kong to be so), and it had a beautiful mosaic ceiling in the banking hall which was designed by Podgoursky, a Russian.\" The building was ahead of its time.\n\nIn 1954 a business associate, the late Harold Palmer, a surveyor and auctioneer in England, said to the author, \"When you get to Hong Kong see if the architectural practice started by my grandfather is still in existence\". In fact, Palmer and Turner designed the Hong Kong Bank building which was completed in 1935. However Clement Palmer, an early partner, worked with the firm in Hong Kong from about 1882 to 1909. He was responsible for such buildings as the Hong Kong Club (demolished and replaced in the 1980s) which was completed in 1897,9 Victoria Hospital (1903), and Rosary Church (1905), Chatham Road. According to Harold Palmer, his grandfather used to go from his home to his office everyday by boat (he lived in Kowloon perhaps?), and he retired to England in his later forties a rich man. He made his money by land sales rather than as an architect and he was in his nineties when he died.\n\nAfter the People's Republic came to power, in 1949, it gained in prestige locally when the new 17-storey Bank of China, completed in 1950, slightly overtopped the Hong Kong Bank. The Hong Kong Bank then erected a flagpole which gave it the necessary extra few feet!21 In 1959, however, the newly completed Chartered Bank rose about three metres above the Bank of China.\n\nNow, in the 1990s, history has partly repeated itself. The 40-storey Standard Chartered Bank looks down once again on the Hong Kong Bank, although the new 70-floor Bank of China is the tallest structure in Southeast Asia. Perhaps, with China taking over Hong Kong in 1997, this dominance is fitting.\n\nNevertheless the new, 52-storey Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Headquarters, with its striking prefabricated tubular design and its \"aeronautic\" technology, has made a major contribution to the skyline, and it has been described as the most innovative bank building in the world. It graced a recent Hong Kong postage stamp.\n\nWhile most of Hong Kong consists of standard, nondescript, concrete-framed buildings, occasionally you come across the unusual, such as the large external concrete trusses from which the roof of the State", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214452, "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": 310, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "277\n\nAppendix A\n\nCHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY NOTES\n\n1860\n\nKowloon peninsula ceded to Britain after the China Wars.\n\n1862\n\n1863\n\nGun Club Hill & King's Park areas were tented encampments with horse lines in the Chatham Road area.\n\n2nd Bttn. 20th Foot arrived in Hong Kong in December and encamped in Kowloon.\n\n1885\n\nGun Club Hill range in existence but no buildings.\n\n1888\n\n1892\n\n1899\n\n1904\n\n1905\n\n1909\n\n1910\n\n91st Argylls arrived in December and spent first days in Kowloon matsheds at either Whitfield Bks or Gun Club.\n\nArgylls replaced by 1st Bttn. The King's Shropshire Light Infantry and quarantined in Kowloon matsheds because of smallpox outbreak on the troop ship from Alexandria.\n\nSeveral companies of Royal Welsh Fusileers quartered at Gun Club following disembarkation.\n\nBarracks Blocks, Officers' Mess, Guard House, Soldiers' Canteen, etc. in existence.\n\nCol. Lewis, RE(Rt.) visited Gun Club which housed the Asiatic Artillery, King's Park described as \"very rough\" presumably still being used for army training. Rosary Church built same year in Chatham Road (then named De Voeux Road).\n\nMohammedan/Sikh Cookhouse and Followers' Hut in existence.\n\n1st Bttn. The King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry at", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 } ]