RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 months of July and August. The work undertaken by the following Council members, both within and outside the Council, is greatly appreciated: Valery Garrett, Julia Chan, Robert Nield, Peter Halliday and Doctors Elizabeth Sinn, Michael Lau, Patrick Hase, Joseph Ting, Anthony Siu, Choi Chi-cheung and Peter Barker. The last has served ably as our Honorary Secretary. In addition the Reverend Carl Smith, who is 81 not out and still researching aspects of Hong Kong's and Macau's history, together with Geoffrey Roper, are both role models for us all. It is interesting to record that Carl undertook his first local history project, in the United States, as long ago as 1931. This year, as in the past, we have invited RASHKB members to nominate other members of good standing to serve on the Council. No one has been nominated. I am thus pleased to inform you that all except two of our present Council members are offering themselves for re-election. However, Dr Choi Chi-cheung, Professor Anthony K K Siu and Mr Geoffrey Roper (the last a co-opted member) have intimated that, because of pressure of work and other reasons, they wish to step down. We are grateful to scholars Drs Choi and Siu for all they have done for our Branch. We are also grateful to Geoffrey Roper, especially with regard to his work with organising activities. It is good to know that all three have agreed to continue to assist our Branch in the future, outside the Council. This we appreciate. For most members serving on the Council or sitting on a committee, is something they do after completing a hard day's work. All are volunteers. Such service requires time as well as energy and dedication to achieve results and it can, sometimes, be frustrating for a variety of reasons. Naturally, on the odd occasion, we, the members of your Council, may not get everything exactly right first time around. It has been said on a humorous note, if sometimes one keeps one's head when all about are losing theirs, then it may mean one has not grasped fully the seriousness of the situation!' We like to think, however, that our Branch is efficiently run. We do, nevertheless, welcome suggestions as well as offers of help. Ask not what the RAS can do for you, ask what you can do for the RAS! Acknowledgements I have already acknowledged the considerable amount of help xviii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 330 the team that formed around me to make sure that I did not leave everything to the night before we were due to leave. The team comprised Dr Peter Barker, Sarah Parnell and Michael Broom - and of course Elace, the representative from Swire Travel who was our contact point with the local agents and guides on the ground in China. In fact, there were further significant contributions from many of the tour members. I hope to have given full credit to all of them on the text that follows. Peter's contribution was, in a way, the greatest. His heavy travel schedule meant that he could not attend any meetings that might have been called to discuss progress. However, this made him feel that he was always missing something, so every time he returned to Hong Kong he had the effect of reminding me that nothing more had been achieved since the last time he contacted me. Once real planning got under way, Mike, Sarah and I met a number of times, and we decided to take one area each for the purposes of research and itinerary setting. Mike volunteered for Tsingtao, Sarah took Chefoo and Weihaiwei, leaving me with Dalian and Port Arthur. This arrangement worked well, and we each managed to put together some notes and extracts from various sources, which I put together as a handout for the tour members. A copy of this booklet, "Bits of Broken China," is available in the RAS Library and may be a useful source of reference for people planning a similar trip. What now follows is a description of what we saw, from the perspective of the person fortunate enough to have been the tour leader. The notes below certainly do not pretend to be in any way a history of the places we saw; there are many far more learned and authoritative places to look and people to talk to in order to gain such information. Nevertheless, I hope this brief article shares with its readers some of the fun that was had in making the whole thing possible. Getting Settled in and Briefed The mid-day flight from Hong Kong got us to Qingdao in the late afternoon. Why is it that all travelling that is done by "a group" seems to be far more complicated and time-consuming than for the same number of people travelling independently? Be that as it may, by the time ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 246 The Royal Asiatic Society Council Dr Dan Waters President Rev Carl Smith Hon Vice-President Mr David Gilkes Immediate Past President Dr Michael Lau Vice-President Dr Elizabeth Sian Vice-President Dr Peter Barker Hon Secretary Mr Robert Nield Hon Treasurer Dr Peter Halliday Hon Editor of the Journal Ms Julia Chan Hon Librarian Mrs Valerie Garrett Hon Activities Co-ordinator Dr Patrick Hase Mrs May Holdsworth Mr Bob Horsnell Mr Tim Ko Tim Keung Prof Janet Lee Scott Dr Joseph Ting Royal Asiatic Society GPO Box 3864 Tel: 2813 7500 www.royalasiaticsociety.org.hk ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n His life and work have greatly cheered me.' Another of our long-time members to pass across was Sheila Sersale who served with the Hong Kong Housing Society in the pioneering days when public housing was getting into its stride. She is one of our many members who laid post-World War Two foundations for the Hong Kong we know today. We are also sorry to have to record the passing of long-time RAS member Patricia Loseby who claimed to be Hong Kong's first practising woman solicitor. We will remember them. Membership drive and public relations It is important for an old, established organisation like ours to stand up and be counted. With this aim in mind our membership drive coupled with public relations has, as I said before, continued. In addition to giving talks to various bodies the views of some of our members are not infrequently sought by the media. Certainly those of us who have been involved in this drive have achieved something. It is possible for numbers to continue to increase if we carry on working at it and showing the flag. We now have our own web site, thanks to Moody Tang, on www.royalasiaticsociety.org.hk. But there is no point in expansion for the sake of expansion. First, we have to decide what the optimum size of our Branch should be. Some members already complain that they cannot go on visits because they are frequently oversubscribed. Increasing numbers does of course bring increased administrative problems and we are grateful to Dr Peter Barker who, in conjunction with Mary Painter, has been responsible for upgrading our computer database. Publications Volume 38, a special Millennium and 40th Anniversary edition, came out hot off the press in December 2000. It is a splendid, 'bumper' issue with 412 pages and includes a good mix of scholarly articles besides Notes and Queries and book reviews. There are many original photographs, both colour and black and white. One of the strong points of our Society has always been the Journal, which has been published ever since the HKBRAS was reformed. If one needs to obtain obscure information about local history, customs or culture it is surprising how often one can find something pertaining to what you need in one of our journals. There is nothing else in Hong Kong really quite like them. xvi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g resigned each year, mostly on leaving Hong Kong, and had to be replaced with new members if the overall membership was to remain the same size. If the Society fails to replace those members resigning on leaving Hong Kong, then, in very short order, the Society would face serious membership problems. Because of this high annual turnover of members, Council decided we had to institute a major reform of our membership database. This task proved to be a major task, and took well over a year before it was completed earlier this year. We now know a lot more about the make-up of our membership, and in a more up-to-date fashion. I must here thank especially our previous Hon. Secretary, Dr Peter Barker, who recently left us on relocation to Chicago. It was his hard work which, above all, enabled the successful completion of the new database to be achieved. At the moment we have a total of 605 members of the Society, comprising 451 Annual Members and 154 Life Members. Of these 605, 492 are resident in Hong Kong, and 113 are resident abroad. 402 are Single Members, 174 are Joint Members (representing 87 couples), 9 are Institutional Members, and 20 are Student Members. 111 new members joined the Society during the year. This was significantly more than the number who resigned on leaving Hong Kong or for other reasons. The Society has, therefore, over the year, managed to increase its membership by a reasonably substantial figure (the increase, when compared with the figure given in the last President's Report would seem to be much more substantial, but a good deal of the apparent increase is due to a change in the way we calculate Joint Memberships, and is thus to some degree illusory). Over this last year, the Council has advertised the Society in a number of ways. In particular, we have run a series of advertisements in Dollarsaver. Councillors also regularly give talks to various community groups (e.g. Rotary Clubs), and also on the radio, and this provides excellent advertising exposure for the Society. Councillors giving academic lectures also often give their academic affiliation as "The Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch" and this, too, provides useful exposure. I would like at this point to thank my predecessor, Dr Dan Waters, in particular, for the many talks he has given, and the tremendous help this has been to our advertising campaign. The xvi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g recognise fully the weight of gratitude I owe him. As I said last year, when you elected me President, I am very much aware of the high standards Dan and my other predecessors set for me to live up to, and I remain of the same view today! Dan's helpfulness to me has made my life much easier than it might have been. Thank you, Dan! Dr. Solomon Bard has been a doctor in private practice, a medical officer to the Hong Kong Regiment during the fighting against the Japanese, and was the first Student Medical Officer of Hong Kong University. He conducted the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra and the Hong Kong Philharmonic for many years. He has been an archaeologist of distinction in Hong Kong for more than four decades, and today, at an age of well over 80, he is still vigorously active in this field. He has long supported the Society, being a Founder Member. Council considered that no-one had made more of a contribution to the cause of heritage preservation and education in Hong Kong, and, for this reason decided to offer him Honorary Life Membership. I am very glad to say that both Dan and Solly accepted the offer made to them. I would like to conclude this Report with heartfelt thanks to everyone who has helped me personally and the Society in general over the year with their enthusiastic support. In the first place my thanks must go to my brother Councillors, both elected and co-opted, and especially to the Vice-Presidents, Mr. Robert Nield and Dr Elizabeth Sinn, and to the Honorary Vice-President, Rev. Carl Smith. I owe all of them more than I can say. Of the other Councillors several have already been thanked above, and do not need to be mentioned again here, but I would like to mention Mr. Peter Stuckey, who nobly stepped in as Acting Honorary Secretary when Peter Barker had to leave Council at short notice to go to Chicago, and our Assistant Secretary, Mrs. Mary Painter, without whose hard work the Society would, in very short order, fall apart. Many, many thanks to you all! DR PATRICK H. HASE PRESIDENT, xxvi ================================================================================