RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x of Chinese and Western humour, The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 38:1-50 NOTES A word on punctuation Punctuation is not an exact science and styles vary. The Journal's style for quotation marks, however, is: direct verbal or written quotes - single quotation marks; and anything else in quotes - double quotation marks. Please ensure that quotation marks "wrap around" commas and full stops, e.g. 'Life's greatest tragedy,' wrote Han Suyin in A Many Splendoured Thing, 'is not to love.' Endnotes only vi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n of Chinese and Western humour, The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 38:1-50 NOTES A word on punctuation Punctuation is not an exact science and styles vary. The Journal's style for quotation marks, however, is: direct verbal or written quotes - single quotation marks; and anything else in quotes - double quotation marks. Please ensure that quotation marks "wrap around" commas and full stops, e.g. 'Life's greatest tragedy,' wrote Han Su Yin in A Many Splendoured Thing, 'is not to love.' Endnotes only (nine point, regular) ix ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n Dan Waters - A Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong, 1863-1980 ..... 210 Dan Waters - More Photographs from the HKBRAS 40th Anniversary Celebration Conference held in December, 2000..... 227 Dan Waters - The HKBRAS Volunteers 231 More on the HKBRAS Trip to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam between 30 September and 6 October, 2000 233 Jack Lao Mou Chi - Photograph of Hong Kong Harbour and Waterfront taken in 1954 ..... 251 Peter Halliday - Some Thoughts on Love is a Many Splendored Thing 255 Chiu Hang Shi - Amendments to the Article 'Yaumatei and the Yu Lan Festival' in 'In the Heart of the Metropolis: Yaumatei and its People' 267 James Hayes. - Model Village, Kowloon Tsai, Hong Kong 269 xi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 29 not only by the white races but the coloured ones as well. Being by birth Eurasian, she made an only too easy and vulnerable target from both sides. In volume three of her epic autobiographical/historical cycle, Birdless Summer, explicit and abundant evidence is provided of almost unsurpassable difficulties in her first marriage to a Chinese aristocrat, chauvinist and Chiang Kai Shek general, due to her half-European roots. Let us quote just a short and very mild passage from Chapter Four, introducing us to this serious and later on gradually growing problem: It was on this journey that Pao's [the Chinese husband's] friends began to tease him about me. When we stopped at night they would comment about my looks... "There is foreign blood in her, one can see that..." “Not at all, she is pure Chinese," retorted Pao. As if it was not written on my face that I was a Eurasian! The greatest resonance of Han Suyin's artistic prose, echoed in the field of film-making also, was attained by a tragic love story, entitled A Many-Splendoured Thing (later made into the motion picture Love is a Many Splendored Thing by Twentieth Century Fox with Jennifer Jones and William Holden in the leading roles). It describes a great love affair between the author (then a medical doctor in Hong Kong) and Ian Morrison, a foreign correspondent of the London Times. This sublime love affair, perhaps the greatest in the whole of Han Suyin's life, lasted several months only and was tragically ended by Ian's front-line death in Korea, when reporting on the Korean war. The love affair was also a scandal in Hong Kong society of the early fifties, when interracial amorous ties were still considered improper and an attempt on the divine social order. Where they occurred, they were rationalised as the virtuous white man, assiduously corrupted by a sly coloured female of loose conduct. Han Suyin can indisputably be regarded as a reliable eye-witness and a true expert in the most subtle and often confounding issues arising from colonialism. Her painfully sober judgement is highly impressive. I myself very frequently return to fragments of Chapter Ten from The Crippled Tree, very eloquent about the colonial powers' cunning attempts to win ‘native' hearts and minds. Here is one fragment: ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n SOME THOUGHTS ON HAN SUYIN'S A MANY SPLENDORED THING 'Love is a Many Splendored Thing' PETER HALLIDAY 255 As I have said before, I believe, generally, that editors should edit, rather than write, but I should like to share the following with you all. A few weeks, or so, after I arrived in Hong Kong in the fall of 1967, I was taken to the movies by what had now become a new friend. The motion picture we saw that Saturday afternoon - I remember the circumstances with undiminished clarity - was Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, starring William Holden (born William Franklin Beedle Jr., 17 April 1918 - 16 November 1981) and Jennifer Jones (born Phyllis Flora Isley, 2 March 1919). For a reason that is not central to this Note, the movie made a very deep impression upon me and I have to confess that, as we filed out of the movie theatre, I wept unashamedly. In 1972, or thereabouts, I was contentedly idling away an hour or so, browsing in the old YMCA bookshop in Salisbury Road - to this day still a particular pleasure (browsing, that is) - when I came across a book entitled A Many-Splendoured Thing by Han Suyin (born Elizabeth Kuanghu Chou, 12 September 1917). Memories of the old motion picture came flooding back. Could this be the book behind the film or vice versa, I wondered? Han Suyin, circa 1950 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 262 Appendix 1 LOVE IS A MANY SPLENDORED THING (Twentieth Century Fox, 1955, CinemaScope. Directed by Henry King, Produced by Buddy Adler) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g ## STYLE SHEET ### TITLE (UPPER CASE, BOLD, CENTRED) AUTHOR (UPPERCASE, REGULAR) #### PART ONE, TWO etc (UPPER CASE, BOLD) ##### **Main heading** (lower case, bold) ###### _Sub-heading_ (lower case, italics) Sub sub-heading (lower case, underlined, regular) Text1 (lower case, regular) #### **Table title** (lower case, bold, centred) #### **Figure title** (lower case, bold, centred) ### REFERENCES (UPPER CASE, BOLD) Samples * (Book) Hayes, James (1996). Friends and teachers: Hong Kong and its people, 1953-1987. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press * (Chapter in a book) Pearson, Veronica, and Yu, Rose Y.M. (1995). Business and pleasure: Aspects of the commercial sex industry, in Pearson, Veronica, and Leung, Benjamin, K.P. (Eds.), Women in Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press (China) Ltd * (Article in a journal) Waters, Dan (2000). Laughter across the Great Wall: A comparison of Chinese and Western humour, The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 38:1-50 ### NOTES (UPPER CASE, BOLD) A word on punctuation Punctuation is not an exact science and styles vary. The Journal's style for quotation marks, however, is: direct verbal or written quotes single quotation marks; and anything else in quotes - double quotation marks. Please ensure that quotation marks "wrap around" commas and full stops, e.g. 'Life's greatest tragedy,' wrote Han Suyin in *A Many Splendoured Thing*, 'is not to love.' 1. Endnotes only (regular) viii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g YET MORE THOUGHTS ON HAN SUYIN'S A MANY SPLENDOURED THING: A TRIBUTE TO IAN MORRISON PETER HALLIDAY [From the author: This Note is a sequel to that which appeared in Vol. 40, pp. 255-266. It now appears that there is a significant error in the earlier Note. My original research indicated that Mr. Morrison and Ms. Han used to meet at a pavilion behind the former site of the Foreign Correspondents' Club at 41A, Conduit Road. This does not now appear to be the case, one reason being that the FCC did not move to this location until 1951, a year after Mr. Morrison's death. Their favourite meeting place appears to have been as in the book; at 'Lovers Lane' (Conduit Path), behind Queen Mary Hospital. The confusion seems to have arisen from the fact that parts of the motion picture Love is a Many Splendored Thing were filmed at the FCC and on the steps leading up to the pavilion. Other corrigenda are as follows: Ms. Han's first husband was Tang Pao Huang Ms. Han was principally employed in the Casualty Department of Queen Mary Hospital and was not a paediatrician Ms. Han met Mr. Ruthnaswamy in Nepal in 1956 391 Old Foreign Correspondents' Club, 41, Conduit Road1 (1)瑪麗醫院 Queen Mary Hospital Lovers Lane ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 NOTES A word on punctuation Punctuation is not an exact science and styles vary. The Journal's style for quotation marks, however, is: direct verbal or written quotes - single quotation marks; and anything else in quotes - double quotation marks. Please ensure that quotation marks "wrap around" commas and full stops, e.g. 'Life's greatest tragedy,' wrote Han Suyin in A Many Splendoured Thing, 'is not to love.' 'Endnotes only (regular) xii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 332 Sir Robert had a wonderful funeral procession with 16 bands. In those days popular tunes at Chinese funerals were; Abide with me, Polly Wolly Doodle all the Day, and Yes, we have no Bananas! They were good, rousing tunes and most Chinese did not understand the words anyway. Bamboo ramps were a common sight in the 1950s to bring coffins and corpses down to street level. Ramps disappeared with traffic congestion and with the introduction of high-rise buildings, about 1960. Major Chinese festivals occur in the calendar when there are marked changes of seasons. People are then likely to feel "under the weather." When the body is at a low ebb a sick person is more likely to die. In 1956, it was said that Sir Robert had “passed over" Ching Ming and should be able to carry on at least to Dragon Boat Festival. However, it was not to be. In March 1955 I had managed to obtain a government quarter at 56 Conduit Road. At the time it resembled a quiet country lane, gay with flowers, where you could occasionally hear barking deer calling from Victoria Peak. A few people were still carried up to Mid-Levels by sedan chairs which, until the end of the fifties, were parked at the bottom of Wyndham Street. I engaged a Chinese amah to whom I paid $130 a month. She spoke Pidgin English and talked of "going topside” when she meant going upstairs. Indeed some of us old Hong Kong hands still use pidgin expressions. I, for example, still talk of a makee-learn, for someone learning a job, and I say small chow when I mean canapés which are provided at receptions. A Chinese colleague complained that, at $130, I was overpaying my amah. He gave his $70 a month. He also said that his amah had no time off. If she had anything important to do she would request a few hours off work. Several people had gold teeth in those days and the saying was that one should have enough gold in one's mouth to pay for one's funeral. The present-day, gold-coloured building, at Admiralty, is nicknamed the "Amah's Tooth." When I first lived in Conduit Road there were a number of quite palatial mansions standing in their own grounds, often with tennis courts, in the Mid-levels. One example was the house on the site, at No.41, on which I live today. The old building was demolished in the mid-1960s. From 1951 to '61 it was occupied by the Foreign Correspondents' Club (FCC). The film, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, based on Han ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 333 Suyin's autobiographical novel, A Many Splendoured Thing, was partly shot there in the mid-1950s. In real life the boyfriend, a war correspondent killed in Korea, was British. In the film he miraculously became an American. I frequently walked past the FCC on Saturday nights when riotous parties were in full swing. The old number 41, "Fairview," was the first private residence in the territory to have a lift. This came right up from road level. The house depended on water from a watercourse, on Po Shan Road, for flushing toilets. There is an artist's embellished painting of the old "Fairview" in the Hong Kong Museum of Art's collection at Tsim Sha Tsui. Remaining from the days when it was occupied by a private family, the master bedroom had four bell-pulls. These were connected to the bedrooms of his four concubines. In fact, during his lifetime he was said to have had eight (some say nine) concubines. This was by no means unusual. When a rich Hong Kong man went to the United States in the 1930s, a headline in a newspaper read, 'Here comes the man with 20 wives!' A Chinese could legally take a concubine up until October 1971, just as up until the 1960s most weddings were customary Chinese marriages. Some concubines taken before October 1971 remain legal secondary wives to this day. There was, of course, a customary ceremony for concubines too and they had their place in the hierarchy of the family. I did know families however where, when the principal wife found out the old man had “another woman,” she was brought in to live with the family. There, the principal wife could keep an eye on her. She was not infrequently made by the first wife to live and eat with the servants. Later, if the first wife died, the concubine, who was usually quite a bit younger, sometimes took her place as a “fill the room” (t' in fong) as a succeeding main wife is known. Another important event, in October 1971, was the legislation that came into force making it compulsory for everyone to have at least one day's holiday a week. Up until then, certainly in the 1950s, there would be no problem with crowds on beaches. But no, it was not all work and no play and I swam in the Cross-harbour Race in 1955 and took part in the 42 mile 'Round the Island Walkathon' the following year. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 377 ADVENTURES IN PUBLISHING: HOW THE CRIPPLED TREE BECAME KALEKIE DRZEWO PETER HALLIDAY A few weeks after I took up residence in Hong Kong in the autumn of 1967, I was taken to the cinema by what had now become a new friend. The film we saw that Saturday afternoon - I remember the circumstances with undiminished clarity - was Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, starring William Holden and Jennifer Jones. The film made a very deep impression upon me and I have to confess that, as we filed out of the cinema, I wept unashamedly. In 1972, or thereabouts, I was contentedly idling away an hour or so, browsing in a bookshop - to this day still a particular pleasure - when I came across a book entitled A Many-Splendoured Thing by Han Suyin. Memories of Love is a Many Splendored Thing came flooding back. Could this be the book behind the film or vice versa, I wondered? I bought the book but for many years - until quite recently in fact - could not bring myself to read it properly. This I have now done and have discovered that it is not a book to be trifled with. It should be read slowly and carefully, and savoured, if one is truly to understand and enjoy it. It is, as the Daily Express described it at the time, ‘a true story of piercing beauty.' As Ed Murrow said of Winston Churchill, Suyin 'mobilised the English language, and sent it into battle.' Although the Daily Express described Suyin's book as a true story, for some reason I had always assumed that it was a novel. Last year, however, through various circumstances, I discovered that this was the literal truth (I would have discovered it much earlier had I read My House Has Two Doors, also by Han Suyin, but unfortunately I did not read this until very recently). A Many Splendoured Thing tells the true story of a love affair between Suyin and Ian Morrison, a correspondent for The Times of London. They met in June 1949, in Hong Kong. Tragically, Ian was killed in Korea on 12 August 1950, when the jeep in which he was travelling was blown up by a landmine. A tribute to Ian Morrison appeared in Vol. 41 of JHKBRAS. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 453 YET MORE THOUGHTS ON HAN SUYIN'S A MANY SPLENDOURED THING: CONDUIT ROAD AND ITS ENVIRONS DAN WATERS In Volume 40, (2000), of the HKBRAS Journal, there were two fine articles. One was entitled Tea, Ivory and Ebony; Tracing Colonial Threads in the Inseparable Life and Literature of Han Suyin, and the second was Some Thoughts on Han Suyin's A Many Splendoured Thing. These were contributed by Teresa Kowalska and Peter Halliday respectively. I will continue from there and include also a little more history about the interesting district around Conduit Road. As we read in the above articles, Love is a Many Splendored Thing, starring Jennifer Jones and William Holden, was partly shot at 41 Conduit Road in the 1950s. This film was based on Han Suyin's autobiography, A Many Splendoured Thing, where Han's lover, a British correspondent, was killed in the Korean War. In the film, in addition to the slight change of title, the hero miraculously became an American. The Chinese-style pavilion out at the back, over towards Po Shan Road, which was used in the film, still stands today. A bit further away is a watercourse, which seldom dries up even during a drought. Water was piped from there for flushing toilets, at the old mansion at No. 41, right up until it was demolished in the 1960s. There was water rationing in those days. Conduit Road itself really came into being as a result of Hong Kong's first water supply scheme, which resulted from the construction of Pok Fu Lam Reservoir. Water began to flow in 1864. Before then, the entire Island depended on wells and streams. Later, a water main was laid around the southwest slopes of Mid-Levels and a road was constructed at the turn of the century, which became known as Conduit Road. The well-to-do in the Colony liked the location and some built their dwellings there. A Chinese gentleman, Mr. Mok Kon Sang, in 1911 built a palatial residence at 41 Conduit Road where Realty Gardens stands today. Mr. Mok was a comprador for Butterfield and Swire (in 1974 the name was changed to plain Swire). In keeping with rich Chinese of his times, he ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 Waters, Dan (2000). Laughter across the Great Wall: A comparison of Chinese and Western humour, The Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 38:1-50 NOTES A WORD ON PUNCTUATION Punctuation is not an exact science and styles vary. The Journal's style for quotation marks, however, is: direct verbal or written quotes - single quotation marks; and anything else in quotes - double quotation marks. Please ensure that quotation marks “wrap around” commas and full stops, e.g. 'Life's greatest tragedy,' wrote Han Suyin in A Many Splendoured Thing, 'is not to love.' 1 Endnotes only xili ================================================================================