Ms. Valery Garrett

1942 - 2023

British born Valery Garrett lived in Hong Kong from 1973 onwards. From her early interest in traditional dress worn in Hong Kong in the 1970s, she became an acknowledged authority on Chinese dress and accessories. Over 250 items from her collection were acquired and exhibited by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London for their permanent collection. A fashion designer turned full-time freelance writer, she specialised in Chinese culture and travel, especially Hong Kong and Guangzhou.

Valery was a very active Activities Committee and member of RASHK,(Life member from 1973, Activities Committee Chair 2002, until her severe illness in 2010).

Obituary by Richard J. Garrett

Valery, née Hayes, was born in Harrogate, Yorkshire on 6th January 1942. She attended King James’s Grammar School, Knaresborough and excelled in Domestic Science and Art. A career in either of these was possible but she was accepted at Leeds College of Art. After graduation she obtained a Post-Grad. Dip. from Middlesex Polytechnic. She won a Ladybird scholarship, and this set her on the road to fashion design.

When I met her, she was specialising in lingerie design. We got married in March 1970, and settled down to married life in Bromley, Kent.

In 1973 I was posted by my firm to Hong Kong, and we arrived just before our third wedding anniversary. Valery found a position designing for Dodwell & Co. In 1975 she was able to join their delegation to the Canton Trade Fair. This was a great event as at that time China was in the throes of the Cultural Revolution and generally westerners could not travel into China. She went up on the train leaving from the old KCR terminal in Tsim Sha Tsui. There was no cross border train then so it was a walk across the bridge at Lo Wu and a new train to Canton.

The experience had a great effect on her, and she fell in love with the city going on later to write a history of it - Heaven is High. It was a passion that endured, and she was continuing her research into Shameen and Honam to the end.

Back in Hong Kong Valery changed jobs and joined the Hong Kong Polytechnic to set up the Swire School of Design. Her star pupil was Vivienne Tam. Having a long vacation was something of a novelty and Valery decided to use the time to research the traditional clothing worn by the villagers in Hong Kong. She did this thoroughly going out and about, often with an interpreter, talking to the villagers and she made a start at collecting pieces of costume. This led to her first book Traditional Chinese Clothing. It also started a long-term relationship with the Museum of History.

Valery continued to work as a designer, but she also became a world expert in Chinese Costume of all sorts and published widely on that subject her magnum opus being Chinese Dress. Gradually she wound down her designing and concentrated on writing. Apart from her books, she had many articles published in a variety of magazines and journals including the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch. Indeed, she became an active member of the RAS and served on the committee for many years as the Activity Convenor.

She had just started on a series of monthly articles, History Matters, for CityLife Magazine, the magazine of the Hong Kong Hotels Association when she became ill. In September 2010 Valery suffered a stroke and after a number of operations she was left in a coma. She died peacefully on 8th February 2023. She is survived by her husband Richard, we did not have any children, and her sisters Marjorie and Audrey, and our niece Katy.

She authored the following books:

1. Discover Hong Kong: The City’s History and Culture Redefined, pub Marshall Cavendish, Singapore, Sept 2008

2. Chinese Dress from the Qing Dynasty to the Present, pub Tuttle, Singapore and USA, Nov 2007

3. Heaven is High, the Emperor Far Away: Merchants and Mandarins in Old Canton, pub Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 2002

4. Chinese Dragon Robes, pub Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1998

5. A Collector’s Guide to Chinese Dress Accessories, pub Times Editions, Singapore, 1997

6. Buying Antiques, Arts and Crafts in Hong Kong, pub Times Editions, Singapore, 1996

7. Hong Kong: Life and Times, pub Times Editions, Singapore, 1996/Hong Kong: pub Editions Solar, Edition du Club France Loisirs, Paris, 1996

8. Chinese Clothing: An Illustrated Guide, pub Oxford University Press, 1994

9. Children of the Gods: Dress and Symbolism in China, pub Urban Council Hong Kong, 1990

10. Mandarin Squares: Mandarins and their Insignia, pub Oxford University Press, 1990

11. Traditional Chinese Clothing in Hong Kong and South China, 1840-1980, pub Oxford University Press,1987

Dr. James W. Hayes

1930 - 2023

It is with great sadness that we note the recent passing of Dr. James W. Hayes in Australia. May he rest in peace. Our condolences to his wife Mabel and family members.

Member from 1966, Life Member, Honorary Fellow 1997

Honorary Editor of JRASHK 1967-1980

RASHK Vice President 1970

President 1983-1990

********

Obituary by Prof. Richard Smith

5 July 2023 Houston, Texas

I write in extreme sadness to mark the passing on July 6, 4:05 a.m. local time in Sydney, Australia, of Dr. James W. Hayes (b. 1930), a true junzi (君子), or, as he would have pronounced the word in Cantonese, gwanzi. I have known James for nearly fifty years, and have admired him immensely as an extraordinary scholar, an excellent administrator, a perfect gentleman, and a kind, loyal, and generous friend. He died peacefully in his sleep at age 92.

Born in Fife, Scotland to an English father and a half-Scot mother, James graduated with a BA (honors) at Queen Mary College, London University, and after two years of National Service in Korea and Gibraltar as part of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, he took an MA in History.

James joined the British Overseas Civil Service in 1956 and was posted to Hong Kong. He retired after 32 years of distinguished service––alternating between the Central Secretariat and local Departments. He spent about half of his career in the New Territories, first as a District Officer (1957-62), then as a District Officer and Town Manager (1975-82), and finally as Regional Secretary (1985-87).

James’s fascination with the New Territories moved him to write about its “centuries-old villages and long-settled people,” and in 1966 he joined the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. In the following year he became Honorary Editor of its annual Journal, and edited the next fourteen issues (1967-1980). He became a Vice-President of the Society in 1970 and served as President of the Society from 1983 to 1990.

Meanwhile, he completed a doctorate degree in 1975 at the University of London’s renowned School of African and Asian Studies (SOAS), and began a robust career as a scholar administrator, publishing dozens of articles and several highly regarded monographs, all based on his intimate knowledge of Hong Kong’s village culture and his unparalled acquaintance with various forms of Chinese-language documentation, much of it in manuscript form. In 1977, James produced his first book, The Hong Kong Region, 1850-1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside, followed by The Rural Communities of Hong Kong: Studies and Themes (1983).

I might add that James’s long chapter in David Johnson, Andrew Nathan and Evelyn Rawski, eds, Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (1985), titled “Specialists and Written Materials in the Village World,” remains an essential resource for anyone seeking to understand the complex relationship between literate and non-literate culture in late imperial China.

After moving to Sydney, Australia in 1990, James continued to publish numerous articles, book chapters, in addition to four major books: Tsuen Wan: Growth of a 'New Town' and its People (1993), Friends & Teachers: Hong Kong and Its People, 1953-87 (1996), South China Village Culture (2001) and The Great Difference: Hong Kong's New Territories and Its People, 1898- 2004 (2006).

After moving to Sydney, James continued to collect historical documents in Hong Kong, and to patronize China-related institutions abroad, in particular, the Asian Arts Society of Australia. Over time, he donated many of his documents––including printed and handwritten books, manuscripts, calligraphic scrolls and maps––to various organizations, including the University of Hong Kong, the Art Museum of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, ther Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Stanford University.

I will save for another occasion an appreciation of the profoundly important role James has played in my own scholarly life, and mention here only a few important things about the man himself.

First, he was devoted to his family, including his talented wife Mabel (née 黃超媛) and his three accomplished daughters, Pia, Suzanna (Suki) and Jacquetta, and their families. Late in life, he wrote that he was “always thankful” for the many opportunities that came his way in life, and “most of all for his great good fortune in having a wife like Mabel Wong,” without whom, he said, he “would not have lived so long and happily.

Second, he was by all accounts, an insightful, culturally sensitive, creative and flexible administrator. In 1992, James received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hong Kong, which cited his scholarly and administrative achievements. The citation (https://www4.hku.hk/hongrads/citations/i-s-o-m-a-ph-d-j-p-james-william-hayes) reads in part:

Young James Hayes was a budding scholar when he joined the Hong Kong Government as Cadet Officer Class II in 1956. By the time that he, became a District Officer in the 1970s, James had established for himself an international reputation, having obtained a PhD degree from the University of London. What he had written on Hong Kong's rural communities, its institutions and its leadership in the late Qing Dynasty, were not only significant contributions to scholarship, but also a vital reference point for a colonial government.

And again, in discussing James’s last posting as Regional Secretary of New Territories, from 1985 to 1987 prior to his retirement, the citation reads:

[Dr. Hayes] considers the New Territories his real home. On having served Hong Kong for thirty years, he was made a Companion of the Imperial Service Order in 1986. In another century, but in the same place, James Hayes would have made a perfect magistrate for the Xin'an County. He would have been able to speak with authority on the rural society and its leadership, or on temples, fishing, sandalwood and pottery kilns. His sensitivity to the needs of the indigenous people and his thorough knowledge of the local communities set him on the right path.

Third, James was one of the most generous people I have ever encountered––generous not only in sharing his vast knowledge, experience and contacts with others, but also generous with his personal resources (including an astonishing collection of late Qing- and early Republican-era documents that eventually found its way to Stanford University; for an inventory, see

https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt1d5nd7s7/entire_text/). Those of us fortunate enough to know James as scholar-friends were often the beneficiaries of his insatiable search for primary sources in the alleyways of Hong Kong. He would often present these items as gifts to us, and when he found something of interest on occasions when we were not around, these materials showed up in our overseas mailboxes.

James was one of the most careful and conscientious scholars I have ever known, in part, no doubt, because of his personal, administrative and intellectual investment in the subject matter. As Hugh D. R. Baker once wrote in a review of James’s book Friends and Teachers: Hong Kong and Its People 1953-87 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1996):

For nearly four decades the writings of James Hayes have led the way in illuminating the grass-roots history of Hong Kong and in particular of Hong Kong's New Territories. He has achieved an extensive output of high quality academic work all the more remarkable for the fact that his researches were conducted on top of demanding work in the Hong Kong Government, a record of productivity which puts to shame many full-time academics.

A recently published volume edited by Professor Baker and titled A Pattern of Life: Essays on Rural Hong Kong by James Hayes (Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 2020) provides a fitting tribute to James. As editor, Professor Baker has done an excellent job of putting together a representative collection of James’s scholarship; Dr. Colin Day has supplied a complete bibliography of his published works; and Mr. Robert Nield provides a highly appreciative biographical essay on James.

And for those who may not have access to this wonderful book, Graham E. Johnson has written an outstanding review of it in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, Vol. 61 (2021): 245-249.

This brief obituary, written in haste upon receiving news of James’s demise, only touches the surface of this extraordinary man, who will be sorely missed. My hope is to give him his due in a later essay, after my tears have dried.

Richard J. Smith
George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities emeritus, Rice University Research Professor, Chao Center for Asian Studies: https://chaocenter.rice.edu/ in the Department of Transnational Asian Studies: https://asianstudies.rice.edu/
Co-editor, Transnational Asia: An Online Interdisciplinary Journal (https://transnationalasia.rice.edu/)
Website: https://profiles.rice.edu/faculty/richard-j-smith

********

Then & Now by Jason Wordie

He ‘showed others how to understand what Hong Kong had experienced’: memories of prolific historian and civil servant James Hayes

https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3227846/he-showed-others-how-understand-what-hong-kong-had-experienced-memories-prolific-historian-and-civil