I'd originally planned to be in London this Saturday, presenting a talk in person to the Friends of the RAS Hong Kong Branch. Covid-19 put an end to those plans, but the talk is going ahead online, kindly hosted by the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) here in Hong Kong. It's open to anyone around the world, just book as shown below.
Friends RASHKB Online lecture 8th August
Our next online lecture will be held on Saturday 8th August starting at 11:00 UK BST (6pm Hong Kong Time, or see the time in other countries). Ieuan Harding, the RASHKB Administrator, has kindly agreed to host this lecture for us and booking is required at membership@royalasiaticsociety.org.hk
Our speaker will be known to many of you, David Bellis, who will give another talk in his series Photographs of Old Hong Kong and the Tales They Tell. He returns with a new selection of photos and stories, this time focusing on Hong Kong’s people. Most of the photos were taken in the early years of the twentieth century, and show a Hong Kong that has long since disappeared. They have been scanned at high-resolution and digitally restored, so David can zoom in to show us their hidden details.
David runs the popular local history website, Gwulo.com. It hosts over 34,000 pages about old Hong Kong, including over 20,000 photos. In 2014 David won the SCMP's Heritage Preservation Award, one of their "The Spirit of Hong Kong Awards", for his work on Gwulo.com. More recently he has published three collections of photos and stories, based on his earlier talks to the RASHKB.
Ieuan will send the Zoom link to the lecture to those who have registered with him, a few days beforehand.
FAQs
Q: Have I seen this talk before?
A: This is talk #5 in the series. So far I've presented it once, to the RAS Hong Kong Branch in June 2019. If you weren't there, you haven't seen it yet!
Q: How long will the talk last?
A: The talk lasts around 50 minutes, plus time for Q&A.
David's talk 8.8.2020
Time to kick yourself if you missed this - it was a great talk and very well recieved. I think it lost nothing by being on zoom - rather the reverse - as instead of seeing a smallish image on a screen some meters away from you, the pictures were all immediately in front of our eyes, just a few inches away. (However, I recommend not trying to do what I did, and 'attend' two talks simultaneously ... for a while I had old Hong Kong accompanied by a webinar on improvisation and ornamentation for the recorder ... It didn't work and I had to give up on the latter!)
Thank you David and the RAS HK & friends.
re: David's talk 8.8.2020
Thanks very much for joining, and sorry to hear we clashed with your other talk. Thanks for the feedback too - it's hard to tell how the talk is being received without the feedback of a live audience in front of you.
One thing I'd add for a future talk is to ask people to use the chat to tell us which country they were watching from. I know we had people from HK and UK, but I was curious if people from any other countries joined in.