Newsletter No. 136

CUHK Newsletter No. 136 4th December 1998 3 studies are asked to record their answers anonymously at a Hongkong Telecom call-in service using a mobile phone. This is a new approach in research of this kind and the methodology has been presented at an international AIDS conference held in Geneva. The findings of the first study, begun in 1993 with a previous grant, have been used as reference by H I V / A I DS policy makers in Hong Kong. A questionnaire containing detailed questions relating to attitudes to and awareness of H I V / A I DS is given out to about 1,000 respondents who are requested to answer them using the call-in method. The second study assesses and monitors the changes over time of risk behaviours and use o f p r e v en t i ve measures among the general public. I t i nvo l ves 1,600 subjects r a n d om ly selected from the telephone directory, who are first asked general questions over the phone and then connected using a conference line to an anonymous call- in service run by Hongkong Telecom where they can record their answers to the more personal questions. To date there is no reliable data on the level of r i s k b e h a v i o u rs p r a c t i s ed i n the community. The study's results w i l l indicate the future trend of H I V infection in Hong Kong as well as help evaluate overall programme effectiveness. The call-in service is also used for the third study. A thousand cross-border commuters returning to Hong Kong are selected at the Lo Wu checkpoint using systematic sampling. They are requested to answer que s t i ons about ' r i sk behav i ou r s ', the use o f preventive measures, and incidence o f sexually transmitted diseases using the call-in service. Dr. Lau pointed out that the future HIV/AIDS scenario in Hong Kong w i l l be determined by the H I V / A I DS prevalence in South China, where the incidence of both H I V / A I DS and other sexually transmitted diseases has been rising sharply. A l l persons living with H I V / A I DS and attending the clinics run by the Health Department and the Hospital Authority within a three- to six-month period were invited to take part in the fourth study. The 200 or so who do are given a self-administered questionnaire which measures items such as psycho- social well-being and discrimination encountered. A n internationally used Qua l i ty o f L i f e Instrument w i l l be translated and validated for local use. Another research project undertaken j o i n t ly by the Commun i ty Research Programme for A I DS and the Hong Kong Red Cross, entitled 'Blood Donor A t t i t u d es Towa r ds B l o o d Sa f e ty Counselling and HIV-related Issues i n Hong Ko n g ', was recently awarded HK$75,700 by the A I DS Trust Fund. Field work for the project was completed in June 1998. Dr. Joseph Lau explained that the project surveys clients at selected b l ood donation centres i n order t o u n d e r s t a nd the p o s s i b le causes underlying reports of H I V contaminated blood coming from the Red Cross as well as the gravity of the problem. Piera Chen Servic e t oth eCommunit y and Internationa l Organization s • P r o f. P.C. L e u n g, p r o f e s s or o f orthopaedics and traumatology, has been appointed by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress as the local deputy of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. • Prof. Chan Wing Wall, professor in the Department of Music, was awarded the Most Performed Local Original Serious Work in 1997 by the Composers and Authors Society of Hong Kong with his music composition Nine Regions Sing as One for tenor, choir and orchestra. • Prof. Sing Lee, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry, has been appointed by the Janssen Research Council, China Branch, as a member of the Janssen Library Editorial Board (Psychiatry Section) from 5th December 1997. • Dr. Joseph Lau, director of the Centre for Clinical Trials and Epidemiological Research, has been elected secretary to China AIDS Network for 1998-99. • Prof. Benjamin Wall Wan-sang, professor of computer science and engineering, has been elected first vice-president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society from 1999. • Prof. George Braine, associate professor in the Department of English, has been appointed by the President of TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) as founding chair of a caucus entitled ' No n - Na t i ve Educators i n TESOL'. • Mr. Antonio Represas, lecturer in Spanish, has taken top honours in the Mexican Journalists Prize 1998 for the news coverage of the Hong Kong bureau of ECO-Televisa, a leading Spanish language international broadcasting station. Mr. Represas is director of the bureau. (information in this section is provided by the Information and Public Relations Office. Contributions should be sent direct to that office for registration and verification before publication.) • Personalia • 人事動態 • Personalia • 人事動態• CU Press New Book The following hook is available at a 20 per cent discount to staff of the University at the University Bookstore, John Fulton Centre. The Discourse on Foxes and Ghosts: Ji Yun and Eighteenth-Century Literati Storytelling There is not much published critical work on the Chinese literati storytelling tradition and its status as a literary genre. As such, The Discourse on Foxes and Ghosts: Ji Yun and Eighteenth- Century Literati Storytelling will fill the gap and prove useful to those interested in this field. Written by Leo Chan Tak-hung based on solid research, the book takes as its subject eighteenth-century tales of strange events (zhiguai ) and studies them as a category of narrative that is socially situated. The focus is on Ji Yun's (1724-1805) Random Jottings at the Cottage of Close Scrutiny (Yuewei caotang biji), but extensive reference is also made to other collections published at about the same time and earlier works in the genre, from the Six Dynasties down to the Ming dynasty. Individual chapters deal with the prefaces penned by the compilers, which reveal a variety of motives behind the compiling efforts; the ongoing tradition of conversational narratives, which constitutes a context for understanding the tales; the ideological nature of the stories, manipulated by both sceptics and supernaturalists to present views on the existence of ghosts and fox-spirits; and the attempts made by storytellers to recast the stories in the prevalent modes of intellectual discourse in the late Qianlong era. Most particularly, the tales of the strange in Random Jottings at the Cottage of Close Scrutiny reveal a keen concern among members of the elite, who are the storytellers in the first place, to offer messages of moral edification. In this way this study eschews the more traditional approach to zhiguai tales that reads them as literature, and brings to bear on these tales the interpretive tools of contemporary Western folklore analysis. ISBN 962-201-749-5, 370 pages, hardcover, HK$240 Information in this section can only  be accessed wit h CWEM password .   若要瀏覽本部分的資料， 請須輸 入 中大校園電子郵件密碼 。