RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p had the most to do with its organization in the past, were no longer able to manage it because of their other activities. There was no response to my appeal last year to members to come forward and volunteer for photographing and indexing. Our difficulties however, I am very pleased to say, now seem solved, as Mr. Philip Bruce of the Information Services Department, a keen photographer and explorer of Hong Kong's older quarters, has agreed to continue the survey when he returns from leave in May. We still welcome volunteers who would like to help him, particularly with the cataloguing work, however. In capturing old Hong Kong on film time is of the utmost importance, for Hong Kong is being reconstructed at a very rapid pace. So more hands are needed if we are to work faster. Membership Application forms for membership are displayed as usual so that members who have brought along guests to the dinner tonight can invite them to join. Our total membership, as at January 31, was 543, consisting of seven honorary members, 113 local life members, 311 local ordinary, two institutional, seventy overseas life, and forty overseas ordinary members. Changes between March 1, 1982 and January 31, 1983 consisted of twenty-one resignations, four deaths, twenty-five notices returned, presumed resigned or moved without notifying us of a change of address, and thirteen unpaid members. There were fifty-two new members. We had the usual one or two protests from members who claimed they were not getting notices but who in fact had altered their address without informing us, so please do remember to let us know when you move. Personalities During the year Lord and Lady Maclehose left Hong Kong and our new governor, Sir Edward Youde arrived with Lady Youde. I take this opportunity to repeat our thanks to Lord Maclehose for acting as our patron during his term of government office, and to announce our pleasure that Sir Edward has consented to take his place. We are also pleased that Lady Youde has accepted honorary membership of the Society. xi ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 358 BOOK REVIEWS Due to the author's lack of training in philosophy proper, the last chapter "attitude towards Time and Change" is not adequately intensive and critical. About Persian culture, he pays no attention to Prof. S. H. Nasr's prolific writings. He does not know that both (space) and (time) were etymologically derived from the technology of weaving. Quotations from the German philosopher Paul Tillich require exact citation and rigorous critical comment, particularly his words: "In Chinese literature there are fine records of the past but no expectations of the future. I am afraid that Chinese thinkers are inclined to be excessively optimistic towards human nature and romantically idealistic towards human future." As As to to printing errors, "ephemenies" on p. 116 should be "ephemeries". WONG YUK The Magic Wok, Philip Paxton, South China Morning Post Ltd, Hong Kong, 1982, 220 pages + 70 pages of illustration. To complete the fine series of photograph books relating to Hong Kong issued by the South China Morning Post Ltd this year comes this superb Chinese cookbook; the book of the TV show. Like all South China Morning Post photograph books the reproduction, colour separation, and razor-sharp definition of the 70 full page and 30 half-page illustrations is of the highest quality. Equally good is the real Hong Kong character of the dishes shown, neither "adapted" for gwai-lo taste, nor forming an uneasy Cantonese-northern amalgam. To be recommended. P. H. HASE China of the Beaten Track: How to do it on your own, B. Schwartz, South China Morning Post Ltd, Hong Kong 1982, 247p, inc Bibliography The cover of this book announces: You don't need to join a group to go to China. Backpackers can roam the country for $5 a day, and those willing to pay more can travel first-class without a guide. China Off the Beaten Track tells how. This is to claim more for this guide than it can produce. It was prepared following a six month tour of China, and the rather ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x himself (by the President). This is a most interesting book which I commend to members who have not purchased a copy. I would remind them that it is still available to members at a 25% reduction in block orders through the Society. I am also glad to report that the talks given on Radio Hong Kong in 1984 by eight members of the Society on important buildings in Hong Kong, under the title "Heritage Houses”, are now in course of publication by Government Information Service with the editorial assistance of Mr. David Skinner: in short, another joint venture. Photographic Survey Mr. Philip Bruce reported that he has completed photographing and cataloguing the Wanchai area. He is ready to move on to another district. Venues for Lectures during the Year During the year we have continued to use the Museum of History in Kowloon Park whose excellent lecture hall facilities have been made available to us through the courtesy of the Curator. We have been grateful to him and his staff for assistance on these occasions. However, despite the availability of the mass transit railway whose Tsimshatsui station is located outside Kowloon Park and only 5 minutes from the museum, we know that many members prefer the Hong Kong side. We have therefore looked for suitable venues there but with little success so far. We are continuing the search. One of the difficulties lies in the fact that it is not always possible to make bookings well in advance and find lecturers whose schedules meet the chosen dates. A New Home for the Library As stated in last year's report, a new home had to be found for our library after the Hong Kong Art Centre advised its constituent members, of whom we were one, that it would be revising the basis of their participation in the organization. This meant that X ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY HONG KONG BRANCH PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1994/95 May I welcome all of you here this evening, the 35th gathering since the resuscitation of the Society in 1960. For me one of life's real pleasures is to be a member of the Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong Branch) and I hope that this feeling of enjoyment is shared by all of you this evening. It is not idle enjoyment, it is of the active voluntary kind, which stimulates the mind, and gives you insight into areas of activity which you would not normally tread into given the very busy lives which most of us lead in Hong Kong. In other words most of us make time to come to the activities of the Society, because we know that when we come to hear a talk or go on an activity we will learn something we did not know before, or are given some insight into Hong Kong's history which is much more fascinating than many of us imagine. These words, although they may be obvious to some, are worth saying because it gives me a lead into the very active programme which we have had since I last reported to you this time last year. At that time I said I thought we had had one of the most active years ever, but looking at this last year we seemed to have even surpassed last year. We have had no less than seventeen lectures, fifteen visits to various parts of Hong Kong and two very successful visits: one to North Vietnam, and I am very pleased to see so many Vietnamese veterans here this evening and one to North Taiwan; the former organised by Dr. Patrick Hase and the other by Mr. Keith Stevens. (Some of us did our best to conquer the Perfume Pagoda high in the Vietnamese hills but lack of time and breath in some cases prevented us from reaching the top, and seeing members of the Society sitting and wobbling precariously in a Vietnamese sampan trying to eat a picnic lunch out of a box without falling into the water was something which is not easily forgotten by those who had the privilege of seeing them). For the success of the talks and visits we have to thank the very active Programme Committee, i.e. Mrs. Rosemary Lee, Rev. Carl Smith, Dr. Patrick Hase, Dr. Elizabeth Sinn, Mr. Geoffrey Roper, Dr. Dan Waters, Mr. Philip Bruce, Dr. Michael Lau and Dr. Joseph Ting. They have really done a splendid job. viii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794 336 I do not know if a couple of bus-loads of "extras" were sent on in advance of our arrival at the beach, but we were greeted again by the sight of bridal couples - a beachful of them! I have a photograph that clearly shows more than 30 couples, the brides for the most part in western white gowns and the grooms in black suits. The heavily decorated taxis were present here too, but so was a totally different kind of conveyance, one that is rather hard to describe. Bright red in colour, it appeared to be the sort of car that might have been designed by Walt Disney - long and open with running boards and big frog-eye headlights. Our guide explained that the city had commissioned 20 of these wonderful creations. One of our number (the dashing and debonair Philip Bruce) found out that such cars were available for hire (with driver) during the evenings when not being used for weddings - and so off he went later that night for a very special city tour. At the eastern end of the beach is the commanding building that was once the governor's seaside retreat and hunting lodge. Fully open to the public, and containing a souvenir and trinkets shop, it affords a wonderful panorama back across the city and the beach full of brides. The day finished with dinner in a nearby restaurant, where our enthusiasm to support the local beer-making industry easily broke the budget of our unfortunate China Qingdao Overseas Tourist Company guide. Despite the preponderance of good beer in all the places we visited, some of our number preferred to sample the local wine. Chinese wine has been around for some time, during which it has steadily been getting better. A local find worth noting was the excellent Hua Dong, which really took by surprise those who sampled it. Comments were heard such as: "I have never tasted a good Chinese-made wine before." In fact the Hua Dong winery has been made famous by none other than the globe-trotting Michael Palin, who went there in his TV series as well as managing to stay at the German Governor's residence in Qingdao. Chefoo - The Brighton of China The road from Qingdao to Chefoo (or Yantai as it is now known) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 22 22. The requirement of an empire content of 25 per cent to qualify for preference was set in consultation with the Board of Trade, which pointed out that some British manufacturers using foreign sources of raw material would not qualify for preference if the empire content was set at 50 per cent. CO323/1192/11. 23. L.M. Drummond, British Economic Policy and the Empire 1919–1939 (London, 1972), 92; Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on the Industrial Development of the Colonial Empire, Colonial Office Confidential Print 445, CO885/40. 24. Secretary of State to all colonies and protectorates, 4 Feb. 1932, DO35/242/4, PRO. 25. Minutes of a conference at the Colonial Office, 27 June 1932, CO323/1193/2. 26. The texts of the agreements are in Imperial Economic Conference at Ottawa Cmd4175 (London, 1932), 19–76. 27. Canada agreed to extend to the colonies and protectorates the preferences accorded to Britain, but in practice raised objections when requested to do so by the British government. See for example CO323/1099/16, CO852/51/9 and CO852/251/10. Cunliffe-Lister minute, 22 Oct 1933, CO323/1232/8, 'Canada has done less than nothing to implement the most essential part of the Ottawa accords.' 28. See the comments in paragraphs 18 and 30 of the Report of the Interdepartmental Committee. 29. Confidential Circular Despatch, 29 Sept. 1932, CO854/174. Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister is better known by his later title, Viscount Swinton. 30. Secretary of State to Governor of Ceylon, 27 Sept. 1932; S. of S. to High Commissioner, Federated Malay States, 30 Sept. 1932; S. of S. to Barbados, 24 Oct. 1932; S. of S. to Jamaica, 10 Oct. 1932; S. of S. to Windward Islands, 24 Oct. 1932, CO323/1188/5. A clause was drafted for inclusion in the 1933 Finance Bill to allow Britain to withdraw preferences from any colony if it did not grant the Ottawa preferences to empire products, CO323/1230/3. 31. Officer Administering Government, Leeward Islands to Secretary of State, 19 Oct. 1932, CO323/1188/5. 32. Governor Barbados to Secretary of State, 17 Oct. 1932, CO323/1188/5. 33. Governor Windward Islands to Secretary of State, 21 Oct. 1932, CO323/1188/5. 34. Stevens to Cunliffe-Lister, 17 Nov. 1932, CO323/1193/11. 35. Cunliffe-Lister to Stevens, 8 Dec. 1932, CO323/1193/11. 36. Hong Kong Trade Returns show exports of rubber shoes to the British West Indies as follows: 1932 - HK$4,894; 1933 - 116,670; 1934 - 643,337; 1935 - 574,376; 1936 - 1,071,932; 1937 - 1,427,634. 37. High Commissioner for Canada to Cunliffe-Lister, 15 Nov. 1933, CO323/1232/8. 38. Cunliffe-Lister to High Commissioner, 27 Nov. 1933, CO323/1232/8. Canada later succeeded in excluding Singapore shoes by setting a fictitious high rate of exchange for the Singapore dollar. See minute by Calder, 8 June 1933, CO323/1232/8. 39. Peel to Cunliffe-Lister, 13 Nov. 1933, CO323/1231/16. 40. Minute by Vernon, 21 Dec. 1933, CO323/1231/16. R.V. Vernon was an Assistant Secretary who joined the Colonial Office in 1900. He had previously expressed his disapproval when Cunliffe-Lister refused to approach India and South Africa to ask for imperial preference for Hong Kong's rubber shoes: 'The Secretary of State is placed practically in the position of a trustee who is bound to act with the sole regard to the interests of the colonies and is not at liberty to abstain from any claim on the account of the interests of U.K. industry or the susceptibilities of dominion industrial interests.' Minute, 9 Nov. 1933, CO323/1232/3. The attitude of Cunliffe-Lister may be contrasted with that of Alan Lennox-Boyd (Colonial Secretary 1954-59) who threatened to resign if Hong Kong was forced to accept a limitation on its textile exports to Britain. Harold Macmillan, Riding the Storm, 1954–1959 (London, 1971), 739-43. 41. CO323/1294/3. 42. Hong Kong Trade Returns 1932, 1933, 1934. 43. Minute by Cunliffe-Lister, 7 June 1933, CO323/1232/8. 44. Edgcumbe (Department of Overseas Trade) to Eastwood (Colonial Office), 18 April 1936, CO323/1298/10. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 Peter Stuckey and Chris Bailey - Visiting St. John's Island Dan Waters - Projects and enquiries ........ 435 449 Dan Waters - Yet more thoughts on Han Suyin's A Many Splendoured Thing: Conduit Road and its environs 453 John Wilson - A poem from the HKBRAS visit to East Bhutan, February 2003...... BOOK REVIEWS 459 Peter Halliday - Voices from the past: Hong Kong, 1842-1918 (Solomon Bard) 467 Peter Halliday - The development of education in Hong Kong, 1841-1897 (Gillian Bickley) 468 Patrick Hase - The fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China and the Japanese Occupation (Philip Snow) 472 James Hayes - From rice to riches: A personal journey through a changing China (Jane Hutcheon).... 474 XV ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 154 since 1997. But getting Ko to first join, and then to be on the Council, was not easy. "I never heard about [the RAS] of course, not until I started working at the HKTA. They have the whole set of the journal in the library. So I started reading and it was really an eye-opener for me. Particularly reading those articles written by James Hayes...I never read anything like that before in my life. "Even though I'm so interested in history and I knew about this organisation, I think...it's not an organisation for people with a background like mine.” But Ko met Philip Bruce, a Council member, during a freelance job, and decided to join. In 1997, he was asked to serve on the Council. "At that time my first thought was it was totally beyond my wildest thoughts because of my background...I had nothing to do with academics. I don't have any degree in history, anthropology or whatever, and at that age, I'm not that young, but because all the other Council members are much more senior in whatever aspect, I was quite surprised when they invited me. "This is Dr. Hase, Dr. Sinn, Dr. Waters...and who am I?” Although he answers with sincerity that he doesn't know what he's contributed as a Council member, he has given several talks. Ko believes that one reason he was asked to serve on the Council was to help with the recruitment of younger Chinese members. Seventy-three percent of the members of the RAS are aged between 40 and 60, but over the last year the society has stepped up its effort to recruit new members, especially young Chinese members. Ko said he has tried to recruit some young Chinese friends but because the RAS is an English-speaking society, Ko says from personal experience, it can be intimidating for people who are second language speakers. "It's too difficult to speak in English, I think, for many people. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 470 and Society in Hong Kong would have been merited. Clearly a book into which Gillian has put a great deal of effort. PETER HALLIDAY Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China and the Japanese Occupation, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 348 pages (text), plus 129 pages (notes, bibliography, index), and 16 pages (plates), 2003. Philip Snow has done historians of Hong Kong a great service in producing this generally excellent book. His grasp of the sources for the period 1940-1946 is wide. He has consulted archives in London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Taipei (although he seems to have missed the Harcourt archive, and the unpublished war-diaries in the Muniments of the Imperial War Museum, in London), and has read very widely, consulting both collections of original documents and secondary material, in Chinese and Japanese as well as in English. The index to the book is excellent - indeed, rather better than merely excellent. The result is a book which will be a standard for many years to come. The plates included, however, are relatively ordinary: more plates, and plates more tightly connected with the text, would have been valuable. More photographs of the major figures of the Occupation period, both Japanese and local Chinese, would have been very welcome. As so often, alas, better maps would have benefited the book greatly. Despite the title, the book has relatively little to say on the Battle of Hong Kong, the actual progress of the fighting in Hong Kong, or the fall of Hong Kong: presumably because there are other books which cover the actual fighting well. What the book does above all is illustrate in detail, and very convincingly, the months leading up to the Battle (the Governorship of Sir Mark Young), the developments in Hong Kong under the Japanese, and the post-war period of the Harcourt and restored Mark Young administrations. None of these periods has been entirely adequately covered elsewhere, and this book is the more valuable in consequence, The book is particularly valuable in clearly identifying the changes which took place in Japanese attitudes to Hong Kong in the 3 years and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 APPENDIX ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY ACTIVITIES FOR 2003/2004 Lectures Date Lecture 2003 Friday 25 April Mr Paul Fonaroff: A General History and Overview of Hong Kong Cinema Friday 9 May Mr Tony Banham: The 1941 Hong Kong Garrison - Unabridged Friday 30 May Dr Vicky Lee: Memoirs of Eurasianness Friday 13 June Mr Dave Morgan: Through Spanish Eyes: Two Sixteenth Century Spanish Accounts of the China of the Period Friday 27 June Dr Graeme Lang; The Return of the Refugee God – Wong Tai Sin Friday 29 August Mr Stephen Selby: Chinese Archery -- An Unbroken Tradition Friday 5 September Mr Philip Snow: The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China, and the Japanese Occupation Friday 24 October Mr Joop B.M. Litmaath: Forty Years in Hong Kong – Far East of Amsterdam Friday 14 November Dr Louis Ng: Sun Yat-Sen, Hong Kong and the Sam Chau Tin Rebellion Friday 21 November Dr Patrick H. Hase; Sha Tau Kok Market and its Market District Friday 12 December Mr Andrew Tse: Ho Kon-Tong: A Man for all Seasons 2004 Friday 16 January Dr Elizabeth Sina: Power and Charity: The Rise of the Chinese Merchant Elite in 19th Century Hong Kong Friday 30 January Dr Francois Bizot: The Jardine Matheson Correspondence. 1827-1843 Friday 13 February Dr Peter Halliday: A History of Suicides in Hong Kong Friday 27 February Dr Greg Thomas: From Model to Museum: Yuanming Yuan through European Eyes xxvii ================================================================================