RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m BOOK REVIEWS 209 be churlish to be pedantic and ask how this rating is measured. Surely Eric does not think so poorly of Hong Kong girls? We know the author's enthusiasm for their natural beauty, their dress (especially the Cheong Sam) continually pops out in this selection of comments, definitions and descriptions. Best of Every Thing Oh, that this marvellous idea of collecting and presenting this sparkling miscellany about life, love, labour and lore in Hong Kong could have presented the best of everything. But we have the author's assurance that this is the first of a series, garnered from his vast collection of bits and pieces about Shanghai and Hong Kong. So, if some of the items are not up to standard, perhaps this is the cook's device not to give us indigestion. Accuracy Although there are a lot of facts, considered and unconsidered in this encyclopaedia of Hong Kong, historical accuracy is not particularly the author's strong line. A few years, here or there, will not matter to many readers who will sample the wide varieties of these verbal cocktails listed here. Historians, of course, will not be so happy with several statements "Chinnery started off (his career as an artist) in Macao.” What of his Indian period which preceded his fruitful stay in Macao? Hong Kong did not officially become a colony until 1843. But it would be tedious to go through this book like a school essay. e.g. Gallimaufry This is not a Hong Kong word, but one, I think, of Ivor Brown, the lexicographer. Anyway I offer it in a sense of gratitude to Eric Cumine for this idiosyncratic but absorbing gallimaufry (what a marvellous bedside book it makes.) Ironically I find myself asking my Chinese wife about these 'things Chinese'. It takes a lot to excite her curiosity; but Eric does it. - John Warner, Hong Kong Illustrated Views and News 1840-1980 (Hong Kong, 1981) By comparison with the other publications under review this is a distinguished book. Put together by John Warner, former Curator of Hong Kong's Art Museum, it is, as one would expect, a sensitive and effective collection of line engravings, and lithographs, taken mainly from two British periodicals, The Illustrated London News and The Graphic. The selection of pictures beautifully reproduced and well set-out with accompanying extracts from the letter-press of the period ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 210 BOOK REVIEWS does give a clearer idea of the topography and social life of Hong Kong in the period 1840–1890, than any other pictorial publication on Hong Kong so far produced. (However, John Warner's other excellent books of photographs of old Hong Kong do complement these works of the engraver. And sometimes the sharpness of line achieved in the engraving or lithograph does give a life to pictures of the past. How often do old photographs of Hong Kong seem like eroded headstones, flat, and serving only as faded memorials to the dead?) Whilst I thoroughly recommend this book, perhaps I should warn the collector that this collection of the I.L.N. engravings does not completely exhaust the total coverage of Hong Kong in that extremely vivid medium. Alan Birch ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 45 Cheung, Priscilla (1996, December 6), 'Laughing their way through life,' Culture, Hong Kong Standard. Cousins, Norman (1979), Anatomy of an Illness, as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration, Bantam books. Ding Cong (1993), Wit and Humour in Modern China, Asiapac, Singapore. Doran, John (1858), The History of Court Fools, London. Findlay, Victoria (1998, September 4), 'Slapstick without shame, South China Morning Post. Fraser, John (1981), The Chinese, Portrait of a People, William Collins. Freud, Sigmund (1960), Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, W.W. Norton. Garner, Leslie (1991), 'Talk About Laugh: Laughter is good for you and that's official,' The M & S Magazine. Giles, Herbert A. (1925), Quips from a Chinese Jest Book, Kelly and Walsh, Shanghai. Green, Sue (1998, February 7), 'Funny side of being Chinese,' South China Morning Post. Humes, James C. (1994) The Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill, Harper Perennial. 'Humor' (1997) Lexikon der Agyptologie. Hsu Pi-ching (1998 November), ‘Feng Meng-lung's Treasury of Laughs: Humorous Satire on Seventeenth-Century Chinese Culture and Society,' The Journal of Asian Studies 57, No. 4, pp. 1042-1067. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 351 The China Consuls, PD Coates, pub. Oxford University press, USA, 1988 Thistle and Bamboo, Shiona Airlie, pub. Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1989 German Architecture in China, Torsten Warner, pub. Ernst & Son, Berlin, 1994 Far from Home, Tess Johnston, pub. Old China Hand Press, Hong Kong, 1996 The Journal of the RAS HK Branch - Volume 32, pub. HKBRAS, Hong Kong, 1996 Precious Cargo, Susan Leiper, pub. National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1997 No Dogs and Not Many Chinese, Frances Wood, pub. John Murray, London, 1998 Unequal Treaty, Peter Wesley-Smith, pub. Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1998 (revised edition) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 103 1997, Introduction, the Anthropology of Contemporary Hong Kong.' Hong Kong: The Anthropology of a Chinese Metropolis, eds. Grant Evans and Maria Tam, Curzon Freedman, Maurice 1979, 'Chinese Geomancy: Some Observations in Hong Kong', The Study of Chinese Society, Stamford University Press Grout, GCW and James Hayes 1971, 'Ceremonies of Propitiation Carried Out in Connection with Road Works in the New Territories, in 1960', JHKBRAS, vol. 11 Hayes, James 1965, 'A Ceremony to Propitiate the Gods at Tong Fuk, Lantau, 1958', JHKBRAS, Vol. 5, Notes and Queries 1983, The Rural Committees of Hong Kong: Studies and Themes, Oxford University Press 1998, February 26, letter to the Author Hong Kong Government 1960, A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories Hong Kong Standard 1990, March 23, ‘A Million to Bury Village Ghosts' Leung, Chor-on 1992, 'Blessings Are Not For All', The Hong Kong Anthropologist Lo, Raymond 1992, Feng Shui and Destiny, Tynron Press, England Myers, John T 1975, 'A Hong Kong Spirit-Medium Temple', JHKBRAS, vol. 15 Phillips, David P, Todd E., Ruth and Lisa M Wagner 1993, November 6, 'Psychology and Survival', The Lancet, vol. 342, Britain ================================================================================