Media

HKU weekly notice

04 May 2018

 

HKU legal scholar urges new Animal Welfare Law in Hong Kong
Associate Law Professor Amanda Whitfort of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) will renew her call on the Hong Kong government to expeditiously introduce a duty of care to benefit all animals in the city at the III Global Animal Law Conference held on HKU campus on May 4 and 5, 2018.

The replacement of Cap 169, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Ordinance with a new Animal Welfare Law, which imposes a positive duty of care for animals was the primary recommendation for law reform in the HKU-SPCA Review of Animal Welfare Legislation in Hong Kong published by Associate Professor Whitfort and Dr Fiona Woodhouse in 2010. On the back of the findings in that report the government has amended Cap 139B to introduce a duty of care for dogs in commercial breeding, which came into effect in March 2017.

While the introduction of a duty of care towards breeding dogs is an important first step, the amendments in Cap 139B only effect a limited number of animals. The amended law does not apply to other species or to animals kept as pets, or for other reasons. Only with the full implementation of the report’s primary recommendation to replace Cap 169 with a new Animal Welfare Law, will Hong Kong law be in a position to adequately address the instances of cruelty and poisonings seen in the territory in recent weeks.

Professor Mike Radford of the University of Aberdeen, who was instrumental in assisting the UK government in incorporating duty of care provisions in the United Kingdom’s Animal Welfare Act in 2006, will present his paper on 'A Duty to Care: the case for animal welfare legislation' on the second day of the conference on May 5, Saturday at 9:10am.

Members of the media are invited to cover the Conference.

Date: May 4 and 5, 2018 (Friday and Saturday)
Venue: Large Moot Court, 2/F., Cheng Yu Tung Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU
Program details: http://animallawconference.law.hku.hk/program/

For media enquiries, please contact HKU Associate Law Professor Amanda Whitfort, email: whitfort@hku.hk, or Ms Melanie Wan, Communications and Public Affairs Office, tel: 2859 2600/ email: melwkwan@hku.hk.

HKUL Book Talk - Little Reunions: Eileen Chang's triumphant return to HKU

Speaker:      Martin Merz
Moderator:   Ilaria Maria Sala
Date:          May 8, 2018 (Tuesday)
Time:          6:30 - 8:00 pm
Venue:        Special Collections, 1/F, Main Library, the University of Hong Kong
Language:     English and Mandarin
Publisher:     New York Review Books (NYRB)
Registration:   http://lib.hku.hk/friends/reading_club/bt2018_02.html

About the Speaker
Mr Merz is a long-time resident of Hong Kong who has translated Chinese literature from Chinese into English, including three novels, two operas and numerous shorter pieces for the New York Times and numerous literary journals.

About the Book
Now available in English for the first time, Eileen Chang’s dark romance opens with Julie, living at a convent school in Hong Kong on the eve of the Japanese invasion. Her mother, Rachel, long divorced from Julie’s opium-addict father, saunters around the world with various lovers. Recollections of Julie’s horrifying but privileged childhood in Shanghai clash with a flamboyant, sometimes incestuous cast of relations that crowd her life. Eventually, back in Shanghai, she meets the magnetic Chih-yung, a traitor who collaborates with the Japanese puppet regime. Soon they’re in the throes of an impassioned love affair that swings back and forth between ardour and anxiety, secrecy and ruin. Like Julie’s relationship with her mother, her marriage to Chih-yung is marked by long stretches of separation interspersed with unexpected little reunions. Chang’s emotionally fraught, bitterly humorous novel holds a fractured mirror directly in front of her own heart.¹

Eileen (Ailing) Chang, 張愛玲, a legendary Chinese writer, studied at HKU’s Faculty of Arts between 1939 and 1941 where she excelled academically and received two scholarships. When Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese, she was forced to suspend her studies and return to Shanghai. However, the two years she spent in Hong Kong were critical to her later emergence as a legend in the world of literature.²

This final work of Ms Chang is an autobiographical fiction finally brought to the English reader two decades after her passing in Los Angeles.

Books written by Eileen Chang from the Library’s Special Collections will be on display during the book talk.

Admission: Free
HKU Libraries Website: http://lib.hku.hk/

Connect with the Libraries on social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hkulib/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/HKULibrariesCollection

¹ https://www.nyrb.com/products/little-reunions?variant=41949185543
² http://www.scholarships.hku.hk/Scholarships/detail/67

Media Contact:  Mr. Gary Chin, Tel: 2859 2211 / Ms. Marina Yeung, Tel: 2859 8903

First public display of historical photos on Hong Kong's major infrastructure projects between 1972 to 1988
Historical photos taken between 1972 and 1988 by Heather Coulson, a leading construction and architectural photographer, about Hong Kong’s major infrastructure projects including the Cross Harbour Tunnel, Mass Transit Railway, Castle Peak Power Station, Plover Cove Water Reservoir, will be on display for the first time at the City Gallery from March 24 to May 16, 2018.

Exhibition: Infrastructure Imagination: Hong Kong City Futures, 1972-1988 is organised by the Division of Landscape Architecture of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) based on photographs drawn from the Heather Coulson Photograph Collection, generously donated to the HKU Libraries by Heather Coulson.

The exhibition is divided into four sections: 1) Mass Transit Railway, 2) Highways and Tunnels, 3) Electricity Networks, and 4) Water Works. Each section consists of displays of large-format photographs as well as scaled drawings that illustrate the physical configurations of selected projects. These are supplemented with video footage and archival records that document the construction boom in Hong Kong in the 1970s and 1980s.

Exhibition: Infrastructure Imagination: Hong Kong City Futures, 1972-1988
Period: March 24 to May 16, 2018
Venue: City Gallery
10am - 6pm Daily (closed on Tuesdays, except May 1)

For media enquiries, please contact Ms Melanie Wan (Senior Manager (Media), Communications and Public Affairs Office) Tel: 2859 2600 email: melwkwan@hku.hk.

UMAG exhibitions
1. Bosshard in China: Documenting Social Change in the 1930s captures the tumult of the 1930s through historical photographs and films

Period: Now till August 5, 2018 (Sunday)

The exhibition is organised into thematic sections that give insight into the photographer’s mind as he traversed myriad landscapes and social conditions, from Beijing to Lake Qinghai in western China; from the bombing of Hankou to Mongolian shepherds on the steppe. Apart from filming daily life, Bosshard also photographed and interviewed key political figures, including Mao Zedong in Yan’an, Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling, Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

Following earlier exhibitions at UMAG of Magnum photographers and their oeuvres in the West, Bosshard in China documents China’s landscape and its people during a time when China was undergoing significant sociopolitical upheaval. During this same era, photojournalism was developing into a serious mass medium of information, and Bosshard’s work in the 1930s was one of the primary means by which the Far East came to life across living rooms in Europe and America.

As Bosshard’s journeys through China are well documented, his imagery offers valuable contextual information. He provides views into a society—and now past—that benefits from the objective view of the camera lens. Bosshard’s work is of historical significance, as most Western photographers only went to China for individual assignments, but did not live there for extended periods. Many of the Chinese photographers were politically engaged or had been commissioned, which resulted in a more selective subject matter and consistent narrative.

Bosshard’s documentary photography and film are neither colonialist nor otherwise politically motivated. Though he lived alongside the Chinese people during the Japanese invasion, he did not take sides but rather let his images—both still and moving—capture the scenes unfolding around him. This phenomenon is remarkable, as traditional reports of political and military campaigns, and especially images of warfare, often aimed to communicate either nationalist or anti-nationalist sentiments. Bosshard documented urban centres and rural regions, peaceful everyday as well as wartime activities, and throughout all of these moments he strived to remain a neutral observer. His oeuvre presents a more holistic view of a country that was perceived internationally as highly important but altogether remained little known.

Venue: 1/F T.T. Tsui Building, UMAG, HKU, 90 Bonham Road, Pokfulam

2. From Two Arises Three: The Collaborative Works of Arnold Chang and Michael Cherney
A visual duet of traditional ink painting and photography

Period: Now till May 6, 2018 (Sunday)

Since 2009, Chang and Cherney have experimented with merging traditional ink with photography in a manner that remains true to the essence of traditional Chinese landscapes, while simultaneously bringing both media into the 21st century. At the edges where two worlds meet, where film grain and ink dots come together, the artists are able to look beyond specific cultures, definitions, borders and geographies.

The full range of traditional formats is represented in the exhibition—hanging scrolls, handscrolls, albums, individual prints and fans—while the collaborative pieces display a highly contemporary feel. By also presenting several individual works from each artist, a clearer understanding is gained of the journey that each artist has taken to their collaborative works.

Venue: 1/F & 2/F Fung Ping Shan Building, UMAG, HKU, 90 Bonham Road, Pokfulam

Opening Hours:
09:30 – 18:00 (Monday to Saturday)
13:00 – 18:00 (Sunday)
Closed on University and Public Holidays
Tel/Email: (852) 2241 5500 (General Enquiry) / museum@hku.hk
Admission: Free
Website: www.umag.hku.hk/en/

Media enquiries:
UMAG Senior Communications Officer Ms Elena Cheung, Tel: (852) 2241 5512, Email: elenac@hku.hk
UMAG Programme Assistant Miss Chelsea Choi, Tel: (852) 2241 5509, Email: cchelsea@hku.hk