[
    {
        "id": 215256,
        "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-2001",
        "page_number": 33,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "We were particularly fortunate in our next event, which took place in August 2001 in Salisbury, to visit the Cathedral and the Salisbury museum where we also heard a lecture by Patrick Hase on 'Traditional South China Agriculture.' To find this latter combination, i.e. Patrick in Salisbury in August and South China agricultural instruments in the Salisbury museum, may appear somewhat far-fetched; however, by the end of the fascinating and extremely well researched lecture and a visit to the museum to actually see the agricultural instruments, which formed part of the Pitts River ethnographic collection, there was no doubt that all members had experienced a day well worth it. Our sincere thanks go to Patrick for giving us his time and for educating us on a subject about which most of us knew absolutely nothing.\n\nThe Friends have for some time been trying to arrange a tour to Northern France to view the World War I battlefields, and in particular the Chinese Connection, when around 100,000 Chinese labourers were brought over from the Far East to support the war effort behind the lines. A number of them died in the process and are buried in the cemeteries. For various reasons the trip has not taken place except by the inveterate few, but we were fortunate in having the next best thing, i.e. a talk by Brian Fawcett, which took place on Saturday, 1st December 2001. Brian has been researching the Chinese Labour Corps for some time and the Friends were particularly fortunate to hear the results of his research and to see a short video/film of First World War relevant events. The fruits of his labour have recently been published in the 40th volume of the Journal of the Society, and Radio 4 in the U.K. will shortly be giving a half-hour programme on the subject.\n\nAnd our programme did not end there. Recently, on 16th February 2002, forty-five members and guests sat down to celebrate the incoming Year of the Horse at the Joy King Lau Chinese restaurant. Not only did we welcome Dr. Patrick Hase and his wife Aileen, who were fortunately in the U.K. again, but we also had Mr. and Mrs. S. F. Bailey (Bill), who was the first Chairman of the Hong Kong Arts Centre in the 1970's and 1980's, and was very supportive of the Society when it was a Constituent Member of the Arts Centre.\n\nNow, however, we are preparing ourselves for our next far-flung visit at the end of April to take place in Cornwall, when about twenty-five members will visit the Gardens (Caerhays, Trewithen, Pine Lodge,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215629,
        "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-2001",
        "page_number": 406,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "357\n\nFRIENDS OF THE HKBRAS TRIP TO CORNWALL\n\nKIRSTY NORMAN\n\nIn April 2002, 25 members of the Friends of the RAS Hong Kong Branch took part in the group's first Monday-Friday organised tour, thanks to the excellent teamwork and organisation of Anita Wilson, Rosemary Lee and Penny Byrne.\n\nThe group visited six gardens in eastern Cornwall, in order to look specifically at oriental planting, and the connections between Cornwall and the early plant hunters. Given the county's place in the history of early oriental plant introductions, there are many gardens to choose from, but in this choice we were fortunate to have the help of the remarkable Maggie Campbell-Culver, author of the recently published and well received The Origin of Plants and previously in charge of the gardens at Mount Edgcumbe, and also her husband Michael Culver. Both had become close friends of Penny Byrne and her husband Tim Heald while neighbours in Fowey. Maggie's love of her subject, and her instinctive ability to strike a balance between educating us and allowing us to roam made her a very popular guide and companion.\n\nThe group met in Fowey on the Monday, visited two gardens a day for three days, and dispersed on the Friday. The trip also included that essential of a Friends outing, good Chinese food, in the form of two fine dinners organised by Penny. Gardens visited were Trewithen, Pine Lodge, Tregrehan, Heligan, Caerhays, and also the Eden Project, though Eden is perhaps more of a phenomenon than a garden.\n\nThe great Cornish gardens we now know were, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the testing grounds for what was to become a veritable torrent of newly discovered plant material, much of it being brought or sent back from China, Japan, Korea and the Himalayas. The way was paved by men like Major General Thomas Hardwicke (1755-1835) of the Bengal Artillery, who brought the first Himalayan rhododendron to Britain in the early 19th century. Discoveries were made by missionaries such as Père Armand David and Père Jean Delavay in the late 19th century, but it was in the early 20th century when professional explorer-collectors such as Ernest Wilson, George Forrest, Frank Kingdom Ward, and Reginald Farrer began systematic",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215630,
        "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-2001",
        "page_number": 407,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "358\n\ncollecting that the flow greatly increased. These discoveries coincided with a period of great wealth in Britain, so that many owners of gardens could and did aspire to these exotics. Remove rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, peonies and magnolias alone from our great gardens and we would hardly recognise them, but almost all of these are relatively recent, and oriental, introductions.\n\nCornwall was chosen as a suitable home for many of these early exotics largely because of its mild and damp climate. Many of the plants were thought to be more tender than they have proved to be (camellias were initially grown almost exclusively in greenhouses, but the Japonicas are actually hardy), and as a result some have grown spectacularly better than they do in the wild, even out of hothouses. One has only to visit Heligan to see this: individual rhododendrons left in happy and unpruned seclusion for 70 years have grown to the size of small houses, with a diameter of up to 70 feet, and at Trewithen, Pieris formosa have reached 25 feet in height. At Caerhays, Rhododendron keysii (from Bhutan, 1851) produces its tiny red and yellow bell-like flowers for eight months of the year. When seed arrived from the collectors, its recipients often had no idea of the size of the eventual shrub or tree, so that planned planting was difficult and the original gardeners would be amazed to see the results now. It is hard to avoid statistics in these Cornish gardens: Tregrehan alone for instance has 15 trees which are regarded as the biggest and best specimens in the country (including the Handkerchief Tree from China, Davidia involucrata).\n\nMuch of Cornwall's spring tourism is the direct result of these largely Chinese, Himalayan and Japanese plant introductions, and many of the great gardens actually close in the summer, as their glory lies in their spring flowering magnolias, azaleas and rhododendrons.\n\nWe were guided first around Trewithen's gardens by Maggie herself. This garden, created largely in its present form between 1904 and 1960 by its owner George Johnstone, around an 18th century house, was set on its new path with the delivery of 100 rhododendron hybrids in 1905. It now houses a marvellous collection of magnolias, rhododendrons and camellias, amongst many others. Some of the planting around the Great Glade is from seed brought back by Kingdom Ward himself. We searched out the Magnolia wilsonii (introduced to Britain in 1920 after discovery by Ernest Wilson in 1906) with its",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215744,
        "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": 43,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "the Friends' Committee, particularly to Mrs Rosemary Lee and Mrs Anita Wilson, Events Organisers. Other active members are Mr Paul Bolding (Secretary), Mr Roger Chandler (Treasurer), Mrs Kirsty Norman, Mr Keith Stevens and Mr David Mahoney. The last of these will be retiring this year and we would like to thank him for his past support and particularly for last year's Annual General Meeting Lecture.\n\nThe Friends normally meet once a quarter in London on a Saturday at the School of Oriental Studies. There is a Chinese lunch gathering followed by a lecture [Hon. Ed. - Suggest you consider doing it the other way around!]. Once a year there could be a week-end away. In the last year Friends started its programme (April 2002) with a very successful week to Cornwall, when around 25 members visited the well known Gardens (Caerhayes, Trewithen, Pine Lodge, Heligan and the Eden Project) with particular reference to the Asian connection; a very sincere thanks to Mrs Penny Byrne who co-ordinated this.\n\nThe programme continued with a very well informed lecture by Mr David Mahoney on Awards to Britons in China. David has been collecting medals for some 50 years, some of which he brought to the meeting; the lecture was illustrated with slides which showed the extent of the awards systems to Britons who served in China in the 19th and 20th centuries.\n\nIn September 2002 the Friends were fortunate to benefit from a visit to the United Kingdom by Dr Elizabeth Sinn, who gave a talk entitled The Ultimate Return: Transhipment of Chinese Migrants' Bones to the Native Village and Hong Kong's Role in the Chinese Diaspora. This was a fascinating insight into the methods and motives as to why the Chinese living in America transported bones of relatives and friends back to China in the 19th Century.\n\nMore recently, (February 2003) the Friends held their Annual Chinese New Year lunch at the Joy King Lau Chinese Restaurant in Leicester Street, London. Around 50 members attended to welcome in the Year of the Ram, of whom six were new members.\n\nFor the future the Friends are looking forward to the Annual General Meeting (17th May 2003), when Dr Frances Wood, Curator of Chinese Collections at the British Library will be the speaker on Marco\n\nxxxiv",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]