I'm Paul Webley. I'm the director of science. Welcome this evening. I gave both Andrew and the pro director a bit of a shock, because I've only just turned up and I've been rushing around saying, where is he? Where is he? I need to put on my gown sort of thing, but anyway, everything is fine, everything is in control. I'd like to welcome you all in the audience tonight, particularly those who travel a long way to be here, and to Professor Andrew Lowe's friends and colleagues and his wife, who I know is in the audience somewhere. Welcome. We've got guests from many institutions tonight. We've also got all the people from SOAS here that I recognise, and I really appreciate you coming. Particularly, this is actually outside term time, and I'm glad you've got a very good turnout. It all adds to the sense of occasion that is a SOAS inaugurals. I love SOAS inaugurals, because I get to hear my colleagues talk about really interesting things, but also it's important for the life of the school. There's a real sense of occasion about it, so that's great. Now, to make sure this is an enjoyable event, can I just do some simple housekeeping at the outset, which is just, do turn off your mobile phones. Here I am, showing you what it means to turn off a mobile phone. Good. We're not expecting there to be a fire alarm.  I'm very pleased to preside over this inaugural lecture. It's the second to last of the 2012 to 2013 inaugural lecture series. The last one is next Wednesday, if you need a date for your diaries. Andrew is a superb scholar and a wonderful colleague, and I know him as best as a quiet but quietly effective head of department. But I've long been intrigued by his publications on Chinese games and the wide range of his scholarship. So I'm greatly looking forward to his lecture this evening, entitled Crescentham Treatises and Literati in Pre-Modern China. I'm sure it's going to be absolutely fascinating. Tonight we have an all-Sias occasion, because the introducer and the thinker are also professors at Sias. It's a very nice family field. Professor Low will be introduced by Professor Bernard Fuhrer, Professor of Sinology in our department of the languages and cultures of China and Asia. He works on the reception of the traditional Chinese canon, history of Sinology, and a number of other fields, including Hokkien, as well as being Professor at Sias. He's a distinguished agent researcher at Rehman University and an honorary senior research fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The vote of thanks will be given by Professor Michelle Hoffs, also from Sias. Michelle's a professor of Chinese literature, and he's got wide-ranging interests in sociology of literature, cyber literature, censorship, poetry, post-socialism, and his most significant book to date is Questions of Style, Literary Societies and Literary Journals in Modern China. In 2012 Michelle joined the advisory board of the International Museum for Family History, and Michelle has been a great champion of our new China Institute over the last couple of years. We're very grateful to both Bernard and Michelle for being part of tonight's event. After we're all over, you'll be invited upstairs to the reception in the Brunai seat for some wine and canapes. But to introduce Professor Low, I'm going to pass over to Professor Fuhrer. Over to you. Professor Andrew, dear Paul, distinguished guests, distinguished colleagues. Today we come together here at this joyful gathering, or as those of us with a soft spot for traditional Chinese literature would say Jia Hui, to celebrate the long overdue promotion of our colleague and friend Luqin Bin, or in his native Cantonese, Lohin Ban. Better known to most of us as Andrew Low, to Professor of Chinese in the Department of the Languages and Cultures of China in Asia at SOAS, a department that he joined in the very year during which I still struggled to get the grips with basic Mandarin as an undergraduate student of Chinese in Vienna. His 32 years at SOAS easily make Andrew the most senior colleague in the Chinese department. A colleague who has, in a most generous and kind manner, helped colleagues at SOAS and beyond when they faced textural riddles in their source material. Needless to say that we shall not name these colleagues publicly now, but it may suffice to say that Andrew prevented some of our rather senior scholars from exhibiting horrendous miswritings and misreadings in their writings. So, on behalf of all those with whom you, Andrew, shared the fruits of your erudition, a humble thank you, Andrew, seems perfectly in order at this occasion. Andrew, our past crossed and I checked it on the 25th of June 1996 when you were head of the then East Asia department and a member of interviewing panels that first grilled brutally and then decided to hire two young chaps from the continent to strengthen the school's profile in modern and classical studies. Well, the two lucky fellows who got what they came for are not that young anymore.  After college in Hong Kong, Andy Law, that's how his former fellow students still call him today, studied East Asian studies at Princeton where he enjoyed a string of scholarships, including a one-year scholarship in Japan. I seem to remember that he was the first Ph.D. student of Professor Andrew Placks, the leading authority on social literature or novels. And he was awarded in 1981 the Ph.D. for his interpretative studies of the sanguo and shui huw narratives in the context of Chinese historiography. Following a short, and as Andrew would say, in his disarming honesty part-time teaching spell, in New York during the final phase of his dissertation, Andrew joined us straight after receiving his Ph.D. Well, Andrew, I have a problem. I have been asked to introduce your research, a task that is by no means simple and straightforward, even for someone who worked closely with you over nearly two decades. Although in a sense it is easy to identify some of your core interests, you specialize in fields that are so often either neglected by colleagues or simply did not exist prior to your engagement with the subject matter. I guess the simple way of describing your agenda is to say that your main interest lies in aspects of the cultural life of Chinese literati. But with your firm focus on textual evidence and material culture, as described in late imperial novels, and with your eye for the detail and for that which is uncommon, in your research traditional literati never appear as a homogeneous group, as some would want to see and present them.  Your seemingly limitless curiosity, which some of us had the privilege to enjoy at seminars and at informal gatherings over food and wine, this inquisitive spirit that often comes with a broad smile on your face led you to the study of the rules of board and card games, going so far as to embark on some close readings of rare manuals of games and on translations of some hundred rules in one such manual. In order to widen your research angle on traditional Chinese games, you even joined the International Playing Card Society and started reading up on the research on Western card games. And I remember one of our students asking me once whether it is true that Dr Loh is into gambling. End of quote. A question which I answered with a big smile, saying something like, well, I guess Dr Loh's interest in gambling is not exactly of the nature that you imagine it to be. And then directed this young fellow to your publications, which can of course only be described as must read items for anyone interested in card board games. Your research on games created a field and it led you to another interesting theme that is the tension between pleasure and guilt that arises from the traditional Chinese orthodoxy or so-called Confucian teachings. Another unique contribution to scholarships that you have made. But given the games of the intellect, only one aspect of cultural life depicted in the anonymous novels of the late imperial periods, you then decided to concentrate on the cultural attainments of known literati, such as the force kills, the sin, a sitter-like musical instrument, wadesi in circumvent chess, calligraphy, and painting. Based on rhapsodies and poems, on the sometimes highly cryptic manuals and on anecdotal writings by literati, you analyzed the background and the major ideas of compilers of over 70 Ming and Singh manuals on wadesi. As an indication of your standing academic reputation, we may mention your substantial contribution to the exhibition on Asian games, the art of contest, organized in 2004 by the Asia Society, an exhibition that was shown in 26 museums in the US over a period of seven years. And we may point to your more recent engagement with traditional Chinese puzzles, which will hopefully lead to a comprehensive catalogue of the extensive collection of Chinese puzzles of the classical Chinese puzzle project at Berkeley. Further to games and puzzles, you have worked on the writings of traditional literati on object culture, namely the objects in a literati studio focusing on the culture of ink and inkstones and including also students of, say, for 11th century literary giant and major inventor in literati culture. A further and more recent aspect of your research interests focuses around the holdings of Chinese material in UK museums and libraries. As you said, quote, treasures remain to be researched, end of quote. And so you worked with the late Professor Song Jiayu from the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, Professor Wang Socheng, formerly at Sowers and now at Central University in Taiwan, and Dr Francis Wood of the British Library on a project on Chinese export watercolors in the British Library. There are quite a few of the around 750 paintings are rare and unique and have not been published and studied in any detail before. The result of this international collaboration project is sheer monumental. The bilingual Chinese export paintings of the Qing period in the British Library was finally published in eight beautiful, large-sized volumes two years ago. Indeed, the historical record of China in the native tradition of illustrated books and prints of the 18th and first half of the 19th century is poor. And these export paintings produced in Canton and later in Shanghai in Beijing illustrate scenes of social life landscape buildings and production technology provide rare and absolutely amazing glimpses onto Chinese society from the 18th to the early 20th century in vibrant colours. I know that you plan to expand this work to cover the holdings of other libraries and one can only hope that this splendid example of an interdisciplinary approach finds a continuation. With this essentially historical project in which paintings corroborate historical records this opus magnum provides rich, pictorial and written sources for the study of the social and art history of the Manchu period and of China's relations with the western world. You and your colleagues have, again, created a new field and I can assure you that I will not be the only one to eagerly observe further developments in this stimulating field of research. Finally, I have to admit that a few years before we first met I came across your translations of those four examination essays of the Ming dynasty published in renditions in 1990 an article which I still cherish very much. At the time of our first encounter I was, of course, far too distracted to realise that I just met the scholar who through a short paper in a journal taught me so much about traditional Chinese exams. But when I first read the original exam essays against your translations I could only marvel at your readings and your translation skills and constantly ask myself one simple question how on earth does he do it? Naturally, these exam essays are notoriously difficult full of references and they need to be contextualised within a framework of exam requirements at the time. It sometimes seems that, regardless how much energy one invests in the study of the past some aspects of traditional China may always remain clouded in mystery but with your rigorous research we gain at least pieces of a puzzle that bring us pretty close to what those literati enjoyed and what made them tick. When translating the old exam essays your eye was very much on a specific exam requirement that is that students were expected to make the voice of the sage or the sages heard again. Having said that I shall now hand over to you Andrew I shall relax and I shall learn about treatises on a very special kind of flower. As you say so often at our seminars I know nothing about your subject but end of quote I have no doubt that I am going to learn from your explorations on problems modern readers faced in appreciating the descriptions on poems in these works and I also know that I am going to enjoy you bridging the historicity of your source material and the authors and thereby lending a voice to traditional literati most of whom I will probably not even know by name. Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Andrew Law. Thank you very much Bernhard, I owe you a few drinks. My distinguished guests I begin by dedicating this talk to my wife Professor Wang Shisheng and to Gao Ting Yao, an ancestor of mine from my mother's side who served as an official in Canton in the early 19th century and where he wrote a preface to the only pre-modern Chinese treatise on the long end, this dragon knife route. I begin now. From the late 17th century onwards there developed intense European interest in the plants of China and plant collectors were sent by official institutions or commercial nurseries to China to bring back her specimens. An excellent study is Jane Kilpatrick's gifts from the gardens of China. Chinese research on plants is normally carried out by botanical or forestry departments in universities and scientific institutes. In the field of psychology there is good research on traditional Chinese gardens but the research on botanical culture and the activities and contribution of Chinese literati remains limited considering the vast amount of information to be found in their treatises on specific plants and from their prose and prose writings. So my talk today is on chrysanthemum treatises and literati in pre-modern China. Why work on chrysanthemums? In China botanical treatises on specific flowers blossomed in the Song Dynasty, 10th to 13th centuries and if we consider these treatises as a whole from the 10th to the early 20th centuries those on chrysanthemums numbered the greatest. Wang Zi Fan in a PhD thesis from the Beijing Forestry University lists 68 treatises on chrysanthemums and 46 still survive. Below this we have treatises on orchids, 38 survive and we still have 17 treatises on peonies. There are these numerous treatises on chrysanthemums because the literati felt an affinity to the image of the chrysanthemum as this flower preserves its integrity towards the end of the season and is an embodiment of the reclusive and untrammeled spirit of the scholar hermit Taoyuan Ming in the 4th century AD. Let us read a famous poem on chrysanthemums by Yuan Zhen. Autumn clumps around my house like Taoyuan Ming's place. I go round the hedges while the sun gradually sinks. It is not that of all flowers I love the chrysanthemum in particular. Just that when this flower finishes blooming there are no more flowers. There are many books on Taoyuan Ming. I would just like to point out that he enjoyed drinking. While in an official position he planned to have all the official fields planted with sorghum so that he could make wine from it. But his wife insisted that he plant rice for food and so he compromised by 50%. He eventually quit his official position and became a hermit farmer. His fifth poem from the series Twenty Poems After Drinking Wine is acknowledged as one of the greatest poems written in pre-modern China. This is a translation by James Hightower and I've just modified one line. I built my hut beside a travel road and yet hear no noise of passing carts or horses. You would like to know how it is done where the mind detached once place becomes remote. Then we have his two famous lines picking chrysanthemums by the eastern hedge without a care I catch sight of the distant southern hills. He's picking chrysanthemums to put into his wine because chrysanthemums are supposed to give you a long life. The mountain air is lovely as the sun sets and flocks of flying birds return together. In these things is a fundamental truth that I would like to tell but lack the words. So who wrote these chrysanthemum treatises? What we have are writers representing mainly the elite of pre-modern China. Many passed the civil service examination in the capital and had high positions in government before retirement. Some were royalty. To give some examples in the Song, Shi Zhengzhi rose to be vice-minister of the Ministry of Personnel and once served as governor of Nanjing and Admiral of the Yangtzee. In the Qing period we have Wu Sheng who along with his official friends introduced Hangzhou Caldevas to Sichuan while he was serving there. Then there is Huang Juezi in the 19th century who wrote the treatise on chrysanthemums in Beijing. He rose to become vice-minister of the Ministry of Punishments and was the first minister to write a memorial to the Daoguang Emperor urging him to ban the importation of opium. In the treatise he wrote 101 poems on the Caldevas and told the son to do the same. Somehow the son only wrote 99. Maybe he was being differential to his father. Then there is the case of Zhu Jianxian who went to the capital to sit for the civil service exam in 1801. He developed a problem in his eyes so he had to go home and then he lost his eyesight. He burned all his writings and asked others to read books on divination to him. Then he started cultivating chrysanthemums and had over 270 varieties. He still managed to write poems on all his Caldevas but he told the son to provide notes to the allusions in the poems. After nine years he switched to orchids and after ten or so years he amassed a collection of over 300 types of orchids. For members of royalty in the 15th century we have Prince Zhu Youkwang, a grandson of the First Ming Emperor and in the 18th century we have Dementia Prince Hongjiao, a cousin of the Emperor Qianlong and Emperor Qianlong himself who also wrote her treatise. What is the content of these treatises? There is normally a mixture of the following four sections. For the section one we will find a preface by the author and sometimes prefaces by his friends. This is where we find their feelings towards the chrysanthemum and information on their network of fellow enthusiasts of how they got their chrysanthemums from different areas, from friends, from exchange and through begging. In the second section there are the names and descriptions of varieties of chrysanthemums. They are sometimes divided according to colour starting normally with yellow, a proper colour in the Chinese tradition for chrysanthemums, so yellow chrysanthemums are ranked the highest in the early periods, then white, then purple, pink and so on. Some treatises continue the literary tradition of the classification of styles of poetry and painting and list the chrysanthemums in the same way. For example, in the treatise by Dementia Prince Hongjiao, the categories for chrysanthemums are the following, the Godang and Order, first class is divine class, then we have marvellous class, untrammeled class, outstanding class, beautiful class, charming class. A third section in the treatise would be the methods of growing chrysanthemums, listing things to do for each month of the year. Li Yu, the brilliant writer in the 17th century, notes that chrysanthemums are in a different class compared to peonies. Once you plant peonies, you don't have to do much year after year. For the chrysanthemums it is a year long effort. You enjoy the hard labour over nine months of the year and finally enjoy the blooms for a month or so in autumn before you start preparing for the next season. This section deals with many practical matters. There is always a section on bugs and we get to read, for example, about chrysanthemum tigers. That's the soldier beetle. That's the soldier beetle. The chrysanthemum tiger bites off the young flower buds and begins to lay eggs into the stem, just like the alien. In 1879, Xiao Qing Tai spoke up for the earthworm. He says, There are those who suspect earthworms harm the roots of chrysanthemums, but we don't see them having teeth. Some treatises recommend pouring lime wash on them and they will die and then quickly pour river water to get rid of the lime wash. In my humble opinion, earthworms may be lowly creatures, but they are recorded in the ancient texts. They do not harm people and do not ask for anything from the world. So why kill them? There are also important sections on planting flower heads and planting seeds. Xu Jing wrote in 1799. They say chrysanthemums can be propagated by planting the flower heads. I have tried several times, but with no success. Jing Nan wrote in 1803. Choose large blossoms of the ocean chrysanthemum variety and then pluck the flower heads in winter after they are dry. In early April crumble the dried flower heads and sprinkle them on top of a mixture of fine soil and rice straw ash and then cover them with a thin layer of soil. They will sprout at the beginning of summer and bloom in late autumn. The flowers will be a mixture of single-petal and multi-petal blooms and there will be a change in the colours. Choose the fine ones for propagation. Gu Lu wrote in 1838 that the method of propagation by seeds had existed since the 12th century. The method was to wait until the flower head was about to wither and then cut away one half of the flower head and let the energy concentrate on the other half and then collect the seeds and plant them. The last section of a treatise would be appreciative prose or poetic writings. The rest of my talk will concentrate on the names and descriptions of varieties of chrysanthemums and some poems on the flowers. Wang Zi Fan notes that chrysanthemum treatises first cover areas in Henan and Shanxi and then expand to cover the provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Hunan, Henan, Shanxi, Sichuan, Jiangxi and Shandong. They spread outwards from central China and then the cities of Beijing and Shanghai. I may add a note that there is also an important work from Fujian province. The capital Beijing becomes an important centre of chrysanthemum cultivation from the mid 18th century onwards and the chrysanthemum and the rose were chosen as the city flowers of Beijing in 1987. We may now wonder how many cultivars were recorded in the pre-modern period. Wang Zi Fan notes that there are 2,886 chrysanthemum cultivars in the treatises from the Song to the Qing periods and after checking for duplication there are 1,776 cultivars. Her thesis however does not give us detailed lists of the names. She gives us useful numbers for each dynasty as a whole. But if for example we were to ask ourselves how many recorded varieties were around in 1458 we would only have one treatise to rely on. Some treatises do not present an accurate record of current varieties available in a particular period when the treatise was written. One could mention for example the Imperial Edition on Plants compiled in 1708 for the Kangxi Emperor. My question is did the compilers check to see if the varieties they listed actually grew in their time or that they just present a summary of cultivars from past treatises. Therefore at any point in time we really have no idea exactly how many varieties there were in China and just have to depend on what some scholar decided to record for one or a few areas. Most of the time they simply listed their favourite varieties. Some literati did not like some of the common names and changed them. Most of these treatises have no illustrations so these are some of the problems. The authors of our pre-modern treatises also give estimates. Sijuw writes in 1246 the naming of varieties is not uniform so we cannot calculate the total number. Moreover in distant places with different customs the names are different and in some cases one variety will have three to four names. On this there are bound to be duplications in my list. Readers should be aware of this. Year 10 Pei noted in 1776 that there were several tens of thousands and he himself planted over a thousand chrysanthemums each year. Later he went from Shanghai to Yangzhou and passed on his skills to the chrysanthemum growers there and established a tradition in Yangzhou of not using the annual wormwood plant for grafting as to avoid having too tall a plant. So I'll show you a wormwood plant. That's that. That's used for grafting. This is a Japanese slide with a hundred varieties of grafted chrysanthemums and the white stickers are names of the chrysanthemums. When we read these descriptions we may ask ourselves what do the cultivars really look like? It would be good to have an illustration for each variety. Unfortunately most of these treatises have no illustrations. In 1718 the magistrate Lu Ting San asked Wang Hui the sage of painters in the early Qing period to paint his chrysanthemums but this was probably a commemorative scroll and not a record of his cultivars. Here we have a painting by the painter Yu Zhiging or Wang Yuanqi, a vice minister of the Ministry of Revenue. He's enjoying his chrysanthemums and drinking some wine. This is the Manchu official Lin Qing discussing the book of changes with another Manchu official who planted rare chrysanthemums in his garden in Beijing in the front of the picture. For our enjoyment and to get a sense of the descriptions when we read our pre-modern treatises is probably a good idea to familiarize ourselves with modern chrysanthemums first. The cultivars now number over 10,000 in the world and in China alone there are over 3,000 today with the same number of names. Many of these names are new. Still we can at least begin by noting the main types in modern China. In 1982 Chinese experts classified large chrysanthemums of the autumn chrysanthemum group first into five main petal types. So it's basically type one flat, type two is like a tube, type three is half a tube and like a spoon at the end. Type four is basically lots of disc florets in the centre and type five is simply non-standard petals. So I will show you a number of slides now. There's no need to memorize the slides. So 1.1 is just type 1.1 brought petaled. This is supposed to be the most difficult chrysanthemum nowadays to grow in China. 1.2 is shaped like a lotus, 1.3 like a peony, 1.6 is spherical. So group two, the petals are shaped like a sparrow tongue. This type in the centre they are incurved towards the centre and the bottom they curve the other way. A plume like it's normally compared to the plumes of a crane, the bird, pine needle type, silky head type, fluttering type, string pearls type. A fourth group flat anemone type. So lots of disc florets in the centre, a flat anemone type. They look like cakes. A spoon anemone type. A spoon anemone dazzling osmentus on a car dragon. The osmentus refers to the florets in the centre that look like flowers of the osmentus and the car dragon are the petals on the outside. A quill anemone and then the fifth main category, the non-standard petals, dragon claws, the claws at the end of each petal. Down and thorn type, just the downy and then thorns appear. And pink line and trimmed silk type. At the end of the petals they look like trimmed soap. So when we understand this classification, when much of the terminology comes from the pre-modern treatises, we are in a better frame of mind to appreciate the descriptions in our treatises and Wang Zi Fan has come up with the following conclusions. For the 12 and 13 centuries, the chrysanthemums are mainly 2.3 to 3.5 centimetres and a few are between 6 to 9 centimetres. The colours are mainly yellow and white with very few purple or red, but some bi-coloured ones appeared. They are mostly dish-shaped flowers. In the 15th century, the blooms are mainly larger, 6.5 to 10 centimetres. The shapes are rather similar to those of the sum. In the early 17th century, some are over 15 centimetres. Red, purple, pink and bi-coloured flowers increased rapidly, and there are also some dark purple ones. The embryonic form of the large cultivar groups we have today was already formed in the early 17th century. From the late 17th century onwards, the flower diameter increased dramatically. There was an increase in flowers over 15 centimetres in diameter and some were over 30 centimetres. I think probably it's the influx of Japanese chrysanthemums at that period. There were more colours, and they belong mainly to the flat-petalled or quill-petalled group, the first two groups, and are basically double flowers. Returning to our pre-modern chrysanthemums, we are still fortunate to have one illustrated treatise from the Ming period and at least four from the Qing period. I will just introduce three sources here. First, let us read a description in the treatise by Liu Meng of 1104, the first chrysanthemum treatise in the world. Liu Meng ranks 35 varieties of chrysanthemums, and this is his description of the top chrysanthemum. So if we had no illustration, it's not easy to understand some of the imagery. Rank 1, the dragon brain chrysanthemum. Dragon brain is the Chinese name of the Borneo camphor incense. The dragon brain chrysanthemum is also called the small silver plate. It comes from the capital Caifeng. It blooms at the end of the ninth month and resembles the type called 10,000 golden bells. But the petals are pointed. Here I mean the colour of the petals in the centre resembles tumeric dye, while the outer petals are pure white. Now there are two types of yellow chrysanthemums, dark yellow and light yellow, and the colour of this variety fits right in the middle. Its fragrance is strong and is very much like Borneo camphor. This flower with its fragrance and colour is to be valued. It is not easy to imagine what this chrysanthemum really looks like, but luckily we have an illustration of this cultivar three and a half centuries later in Juyo Kuang's chrysanthemum these treatise of 1458. Juyo Kuang was a grandson of the first Ming emperor. His father Jusu also had a garden in Caifeng and experimented with wild plants to alleviate famine. I do not have a copy of the original edition of the Ming princess treatise which is in Japan. Japan has at least three copies, but the illustrations and poems were copied into Gaosong's painting manual in 1550. So that's supposed to be the dragon brain chrysanthemum, the first chrysanthemum recorded in any treatise. We have to be careful when we look at some of the illustrations in the princess treatise. Over a century later the retired official Lubie wrote a very learned and detailed treatise on chrysanthemums and pointed out one interesting error in the illustrations of the princess treatise. Basically the illustrator misread a term in this old treatise and misread the term for petal and took it to mean leaf. So basically in the illustration then a leaf sticks out, which is not supposed to be there. And the second thing, same thing, there's a leaf. And so Lubie points out that he says Liu Meng's notes to this flower are very clear but in the treatise of the Ming prince for each bloom of this variety a chrysanthemum leaf sticks out, which is a blunder and people thought this to be a rare variety. In 1746 the Manchu prince Hongjiao, a cousin of the Qianlong emperor wrote a treatise on chrysanthemums in this east garden which, as friends noted, had come from the south. He had been involved in a political intrigue and decided to keep a low profile and grow chrysanthemums. His treatise with illustrations resurfaced some 10 years ago. Chrysanthemum enthusiasts begged on the internet and the anonymous owner finally relented and uploaded 15 of the 100 paintings with descriptions. So let's just enjoy some of the paintings. So that's the treatise in some private collector's hands in China and then some of the colours. So we have the painting on the right hand side and then a detailed description of the chrysanthemum on the left hand side. Pink butterfly. Okay, then we just whiskers, goblets. We now move on to the Qianlong emperor. In 1756 the Qianlong emperor ordered various high officials and painters to paint ocean chrysanthemums. The emperor noted that ocean chrysanthemums had only recently appeared and some were over 32 centimetres in diameter. He then follows what the poem and the first two lines read. Chrysanthemums originally came from Taoyuan Ming's eastern hedge. Who made it appear from the west of the ocean? Two years later he wrote poems on 44 types of ocean chrysanthemums and one reads, The yellow flower has petals naturally, but where did its purple colour and disc petals, the central petals come from? Taoyuan Ming would probably not recognise it. Those from west of the ocean differ from those east of the hedge. So that's the flower that he talks about. It is clear that the emperor made a mistake. The ocean chrysanthemums could not have come from the west. Peter Valder notes that six varieties of chrysanthemums were grown in Holland in 1688, but nothing is known of their provenance and nothing was further heard of these. The first person in Britain to cultivate large flowered Chinese chrysanthemums was James Colville, and the variety, the first flowered in his nursery in 1795, had large purple blooms and these came via Pierre-Louis Blancar, a merchant in Marseil, who had brought white lilac and purple varieties of chrysanthemums back from China in 1789, of these only the purple survived. It would therefore be much easier to trace Qianlong's ocean chrysanthemums back to Japan instead of the west, and comparing the names of the varieties in Prince Hongjiao's list, we can see that some of his chrysanthemums also came from Japan. A few years ago, a long scroll painting, 11.74 metres long of Qianlong's 44 Ocean Chrysanthemums Return to China, and that has been published in 2010. The painting is by leaving the court painter, so we will just look at some of the... So that's the whole painting and the individual chrysanthemums that the modern publishers just took down. Honeywax Lotus, Red Parasol, Osmandas Purple, Yaw Yellow Competitor, so it competes with this peony which is called Yaw Yellow, and then so we found that yellow peony for you. Then Bright Ivy Platter, Goblet Purple Clouds, and then the problem then is in a later manual in the 20th century, we have the same name, but a completely different chrysanthemum. Crane Head Red. Okay. So in 1718, Ludin Tsai and Rotong Ocean Chrysanthemums, they come from overseas and have only appeared recently. They are 1.9 to 2.2 metres tall, and the flowers are big as bowls. These are the outstanding examples of chrysanthemums. In 1756, when Zhou Yi Gui wrote his treatise on 36 Ocean Chrysanthemums, he would still argue in his preface that the chrysanthemums came from China and not abroad. In 1811, Jinan wrote in Zhejiang, the ocean chrysanthemums come from mountains beyond the sea and are brought in by merchant ships and are then passed on for planting. I have been enthusiastic about these for over 30 years and will always buy the outstanding ones. Jinan still does not seem to know where they came from. Finally, in 1838, Gu Lu from Suzhou puts it down firmly. There are several types of chrysanthemums. The Chinese variety is the best and number over 300. Most of the war varieties come from Japan. Their numbers are even greater than those of the Chinese varieties. In general, most have brilliant colours and they are commonly referred to as yangjong, ocean varieties. We now take a brief excursion into chrysanthemums in Japan of the pre-modern period. Here I would like to thank Professor Andrew Gerstel and Dr Akiko Yanu for their help in translating the Japanese book titles and answering some of my amateurish questions on Japan. Chrysanthemums most probably came to Japan from China and perhaps via Korea in the late 8th century. According to the Japanese scholar Isono Naohide, chrysanthemum cultivation in Japan reached a peak in 1711 to 1735, and we note that this is right before ocean chrysanthemums reached Emperor Qianlong's court. We may also note that around 30 varieties of Japanese camellias entered China from at least the 1690s onwards. This is the earliest treatise on chrysanthemums with colour illustrations. It was compiled by Jim Po Shu Gyoku in 1519 at the age of 16. It is written in classical Chinese. He was the second son of the Daimio Lord Takeda Motonobu. There are a total of 94 varieties in colour with classical Chinese poems written on each variety. The treatise reminds us of the colour treatise of the Ming prince to Youkwang in terms of flower shapes. Then we move on to the boom of chrysanthemums in Japan in the early 18th century. This is compiled in 1713, and we have flower shapes here, flower shapes, and then a water sprinkler at the bottom left-hand corner.  So there are all these tools, and this is in honour of Professor Bernhard Führer, I think, who secretly collects tools. Then in 1715, cultivating chrysanthemums in the garden, listing different chrysanthemum flower shapes. A few more. And then in 1717, that's when the chrysanthemums grow up and in pre-modern China, Japan, you either have plants in the garden and then you build tents over them or you bring them into the house. There was no midway solution. I saw a box to carry the chrysanthemums, and then in both China and Japan we find records of chrysanthemum meetings, but the Japanese records are more detailed. There Japanese enthusiasts brought their price samples to be judged. So here's one example where on the top row you have the names of the varieties of Japanese chrysanthemums. Then below in large characters you have the names of the chrysanthemum enthusiasts and they are normally under pseudonyms and then you have the brief descriptions of the chrysanthemums. This book lists eight meetings in the ninth month in the Higashiyama area of Kyoto with names of the exhibitors who use pseudonyms, names of the varieties with short descriptions. They put on a show of 190 cultivars and there were 70 enthusiasts. There are similar records for two other chrysanthemum meetings in Kyoto and one in Edo for the same period. The Japanese chrysanthemum names are also wonderful and would be interesting to analyse. There are also two catalogs from nursery growers with the names of cultivars, brief descriptions and prices. Here is an example of the first catalog in 1724 which lists 114 varieties from two nurseries in Osaka. The Japanese scholar Isono Naohide has pointed out that in this catalog the two most expensive ones cost 3.2 rio of gold for each seedling and this would equate to over 4,000 pounds in the modern period and there are 19 other varieties which cost 3 rio of gold equal to 3,900 pounds in the modern period. So here at your right hand side, the first column lists the most expensive one, the Hokkyokuzan, the North Polar Mountain and it will cost you now 4,000 pounds. We are then reminded of Tulipomania in Holland in the 1630s when the price of one single rare tulip bulb could buy you a townhouse in Amsterdam. This is from Anna Pavod's book, The Tulip. We then move on to some more treatises on Japanese chrysanthemums. In this work you read about the history of chrysanthemum banquets at the court and enjoy the chrysanthemums descriptions and Japanese poems. In 1755 we have the 100 chrysanthemums from the Reki Garden compiled by Matsudaira Yorihiro in 1755. He was the Daimio Lord of the Moriyama Domain in Mutsu province. The name of his garden comes from the story of the chrysanthemum pool in the Zyprefecture Jiangshi province of China, where chrysanthemums grow nearby and drinking from the chrysanthemum infused water gives one long life. The treatise is written in classical Chinese and follows closely the terminology and descriptive style of Lubie's Chinese treatise of 1563. The same Lord also wrote the classic of chrysanthemums in the same year, 1755, he writes. In Japan the love of chrysanthemums reached a height in the Shotoko and Kyoho period, 1711 to 1735 and continued for several decades and there has never been such a rage for chrysanthemums until our time. Chrysanthemums in Japan went through three changes. In the ancient past they loved the so-called proper chrysanthemums, but the change occurred in the Hoi period, 1704 to 1710 when large chrysanthemums were very popular. In the Kyoho period, 1716 to 35, there was a change and small chrysanthemums became popular. Recently there has been another change and the proper chrysanthemums have emerged again. The large chrysanthemums often exceed one shaku, 30.3 cm in diameter, so that's roughly the same diameter as what Qianlong talks about. And there are now several hundred families that cultivate chrysanthemums. They form societies, decide on the grades of varieties and compete to come up with new ones. If someone joins one society and goes to another one, he is cursed like an enemy. If he gives a seedling to someone in another society, friendship is terminated. There are those who go to the extreme, they will not show their chrysanthemums and if they have a rare variety, even friends in the same society will not be able to get a seedling. Therefore, he goes on to say, one should plant chrysanthemums and keep extremely rare ones to oneself. If someone begs of you sincerely for an extraordinary variety, you should respond but do not give it away recklessly. Otherwise, this is treating a rare cultivar like a lowly plant. Treated in such a way, the cultivar will not be noble. Cultivars which are difficult to obtain are priced doubly. This is the meaning of enjoying chrysanthemums. Let this be a warning. Do not let a rare seedling fall into the hands of a merchant. Once it falls into their hands, the seedling will be multiplied. A price will be set and the grade of the variety will fall by one level. Then in 1846 we have cultivated this work and just to show you the different stages and notice on your upper left hand corner we have the water sprinkler and so on. This is by the famous Ukioi artist Keisai Aesan with a caudizans enjoying the blooms. You need to have support for the large blooms because otherwise they will just bend over. In the late 19th century, just some more chrysanthemum manuals. This looks like a mop but this is a chrysanthemum. Then in another coloured one, this you can now go on the internet and it will cost you 100 pounds for each of these coloured prints. This manual treatise is interesting because all this colour prints were incorporated in Miao Pusun's Black and White Chinese Chrysanthemum Manual in 1923. This is one of my favourite names. It's called Going Home and it is a famous quote from the chrysanthemum poet Tao Yuanming. I'm going back. I'm quitting. I don't want to be an official. I now move on to Chinese poems on the individual varieties. When we read poems on chrysanthemums before the 12th century we will normally only find poems on yellow chrysanthemums and then white ones and then light purple ones in the 9th century. The situation begins to change in the 12th century with specific names given to varieties. From the 13th century onwards, we start finding poems on large groups of chrysanthemum cultivars normally following the tradition of writing 100 poems on a topic and the world of the chrysanthemum opens up for readers. There will still be poems on chrysanthemums in general without referring to specific varieties but there are now a few thousand cultivars with specific names for poets to write on. No matter what one may think of the quality of Chinese poetry after the Song period, there is at least new content. Before the imagery in poems centered mainly on Tao Yuanming and male literati scholars, now we enter a world of chrysanthemums inhabited by all sorts of flowers, objects, people and places. The names begin to make one delirious. There are approximately 2,000 names. The early ones are normally in three characters with an adjective and a noun. The names get longer later on with four characters or more and a verb is sometimes added to provide some aesthetic movement for the flower. I will just give a few examples from some categories. Those named after people, yellow Buddha's head, louds his white eyebrows, imperial concubine after bath, named after plants, golden peony, golden lotus, jade rose, named after birds and beasts, a young nightingale cleaning his wings, red-eyed tiger's whiskers, orangutan lip purple, four character names, ancient Buddha's prayer mat, parrot holding a chick, five character name, golden phoenix breaking through the slanting rays of the sun, seven character name, red sleeves, phoenix, fretwork, long jade fingers. This is from a description of the heron Tui Yingying Oreo in the play, The Western Wing. With this proliferation of names on different objects, we move into the subcategory of Chinese poetry known as poems on objects. We have at least 13 different sets of poems tolling over 1,500 poems. I'm not able to deal with the subject adequately here today, but one gets immense pleasure in deciphering the illusions connected with the names of the cultivars and to admire the skill of the poet in writing about the specific name and the flower at the same time. Here I will just introduce a few poems on chrysanthemums before the song and a few later poems on a particular cultivars. This is by the famous mid-to-late, late-hump-port Yi Sang-Ying. Dolan faint, the purples bright and gorgeous, the yellows. These are the colours by magistrate Taoyuan Ming's hedges and the fragrances in Lohan's house. When would they ever keep back the heavy dew? In truth, they fear the setting sun. I would like to drink to you the chrysanthemum from the Golden Parrot Conch Cup and send you on your way to the Hall of the Immortals. Lohan was a high and upright official in the fourth century and when he retired, all kids and chrysanthemums bloomed in his garden and this was regarded as a sign of his virtuous conduct. Next, we have a poem by the monk Chizi. Neither dazzling nor cockatish, it has a different kind of fragrance. I have planted many but not with the double ninth festival in mind. Do not dislike me for looking at you with sober eyes. I really love your light yellow. The monk Chizi was head of the Buddhists in Jingzhou under the military commissioner Gao Jixing. With his sober eyes, he also could not afford to pay for wine like Taoyuan Ming. But the question I would like to raise here is the following. After some of the chrysanthemums took on names of traditional beauties, how are the poets going to avoid writing about dazzling beauty and cockatishness as mentioned in this poem. So this belongs to a future study. Next, we have a poem by the famous rebel leader Huang Chao, Yellow Nest. In autumn when the eighth day of the ninth month arrives after my flower blooms the hundred flowers wither. He wrote this after he failed the exams. Rangs of fragrance rush to heaven and permeate the capital Chang'an and in the whole city all the blooms have put on golden armor. This last poem by the future rebel leader Huang Chao is interesting. It has probably contributed to the naming of a particular chrysanthemum cultiva group, the armor chrysanthemums. Next, we have Yang Xunji who wrote 100 poems on the chrysanthemum. This is particularly worth reading because of his great skill. He rose to be a bureau director in the Ministry of Rights but retired very early in his career at the age of, I think, 30 years old.  So the poem, this darturial about this white chrysanthemum named after a monk. The darturial blossom is white and silky. It is like a young monk from the mountain. It must be Tao Yuanming who converted to the pure land faith, but probably Tao Yuanming did not. Anyway, it now stands transformed in the autumn wind. Another poem on the tea chrysanthemum. You can still buy tea chrysanthemums in Chinatown. The tea chrysanthemum blooms and is reflected in the setting sun and well gardens and desert plots. It is miserable. It will not be in Magistrate Tao's wine cup because it's a tea chrysanthemum but will provide the fragrance in Lutong's tea bowl. Lutong was a famous tea drinker and wrote the classic of tea in the town period. Next we have a poem by Qian Fu who actually came first in the palace examination in 1490. Here we have an example of a chrysanthemum named after beauty but fortunately the color is really honey yellow. So the poem goes, when she entered the Wu palace, she learned to dress in a Taoist fashion which is yellow and changed all her green shirts for yellow skirts. Although she grew up a beauty at the foot of Zhu Luo Hill, now with her yellow ramey clothing she has forgotten all her fine appearance. Basically the background was this beauty Xi Shi was from the late spring and autumn period and was sent by the kingdom of Yue to seduce the king of Wu and make him forget his administration. She succeeded and the kingdom of Wu was toppled. So there are many varieties named after Xi Shi, red, white, yellow purpose but in this case it's honey yellow so the poet actually has managed to write a nice poem on the chrysanthemum without making it look too dazzling or cockatish. Now I would like to make some concluding remarks. In this talk I have only touched on literary princely and court culture of chrysanthemums because this is the main material that has come down to us. There is a natural tendency to order the world as can be seen in all our treatises and one impressive effort was made by Tu Cheng Kui in the 1640s where he came up with a detailed classification of chrysanthemums divided into crude types and fine types. For the crude types he gives an estimate of over 250 varieties but with no names. For the fine types he notes that they are all descended from two main types. Cut silk, a variety and a beauty, she's a variety which looks like a lotus. However for the first type there are 36 varieties which then give rise to a further 17 groups subdivided into 21 kinds and for the second type there are already 16 varieties and they give rise to 11 groups with 52 kinds. So later scholars simply gave up. Aside from treatises there is a wealth of information that remains to be collected from the poems and prose writings of the pre-modern scholars. What the popular masses contributed to chrysanthemum culture is another story but we can mention the example of chrysanthemum festivals in Xiaolang Tang, Guangdong province which began from 1782 onwards but for some strange decision they only decided to have a chrysanthemum festival every 60 years to see who would survive in the next round. We now consider the preservation of the varieties. In many of our treatises both Chinese and Japanese this term appears the enthusiasts. Literally people who have a fondness for doing things. This term refers to those with an enthusiasm for various matters and appears in many types of writings in China and a general study of the different contexts where this term appears. It's not difficult to do nowadays with a powerful Chinese databases. This will add to our understanding of how and what type of culture developed in pre-modern China. Some of our chrysanthemum enthusiasts have tried their very best to describe these varieties but without illustrations or an arboretum or learning society to record all the varieties we can only lament on the loss of so many varieties in pre-modern China and also probably Japan. Many of our pre-modern enthusiasts were aware of this problem. Xiao Qing Tai noted in 1879 that 80 to 90% of the varieties enlisted in old treatises had not survived. Do we still have some time? I'll just have two more pages. Ming Ting Kai wrote in 1844 in cultivating chrysanthemums that one should offer similar types to others. If you get a good variety and keep it to yourself, this is like Wang Rong who bored through the pits of the plums in his orchard so that others could not propagate them. Once you lose a variety and then ask other people they will definitely not have them. Over these ten years I have lost eight or nine kinds such as the big red peony and the jade soaring wheel. I cannot get them again and I would like to present this idea to chrysanthemum lovers for us to swear to be generous in passing on finer varieties so that they can be further admired by chrysanthemum lovers. Ming Ting Kai was of a generous nature. Some however refused to think of the greater good and for them if you begged the trick was to offer you a price grafted onto a rootstock and make it difficult at least for propagation through side roots. If you have the side shoot it will simply be the stock and not the main chrysanthemum. Another writer however Xiao Qing Tai offers a solution. If you receive a grafted chrysanthemum as a present try the Ya Tiao method of propagation where you press a part of the side branch into the soil and something hopefully might grow. Moving to the 20th century after the war in 1949 Hang Zhou only had 70 plus varieties remaining and in 1953 Shanghai had just over 150. Numbers have recovered and in 1990 there were over 3,000. This is a slide of Li Qing Shan and his daughter who has a fall character name. In 1991 Li Qing Shan and his daughter Li Er Yuingwen published the treatise of 100 rare chrysanthemums in colour. I'm sorry it's black and white but that's actually in colour. Li Qing Shan is a retired cadre from a spare parts factory for the power industry and he devoted 10 years of his life to growing chrysanthemums. The treatise is a collection of 100 chrysanthemums with brief notes and for each chrysanthemum there is a classical poem on top written mainly by members of calligraphy associations from the different provinces of China. Finally we come back to our western plant collectors. Many of them commissioned Chinese artists to paint botanical specimens for them, especially in the 19th century. These preserve some of the names and images of chrysanthemums and are invaluable. So here's one from the reef's collection of the Lindley Library Royal Horticultural Society. It's a three different types of chrysanthemums grafted onto one plant. Here are two more varieties. And here on your right hand side is this purple dragon whiskers but we remember that the prince Hong Jiao in the 18th century had his purple dragon whiskers and their purple and now we have a different cultivar which is more pinkish and then it has the same name so we have all these problems. So to end I would like to thank all of you for your presence to Paeol Gaglani Bart and her team for organizing this event and Dr Yen Zinan who helped me in many ways. Thank you very much. Director, ladies and gentlemen I'm honoured to have been asked to give the vote of thanks on this joyful occasion where we celebrate the elevation of Andrew Lowe to the professor. I've always been very impressed by the ease with which Andrew both in his research and in his teaching handles a wide variety of source materials and crosses a range of different disciplines. I haven't checked but I feel quite confident in stating that this must be the first so has in all your lecture ever to cite a PhD thesis from Beijing Forestry University alongside scholarship on classical poetry. In my view his greatest achievement in doing this kind of work is to present it not as the latest attempt at crossing the boundaries between existing disciplines but as a completely normal set of knowledge and skills which Chinese literati would not have chopped up into different fields the way we do at universities nowadays or perhaps would have chopped up differently according to criteria that would have made sense to them. Andrew's work is a constant reminder to all of us working in Chinese studies of the need not to take these dominant epistemologies for granted. Perhaps for this very reason Andrew's job title as professor is not professor of Chinese this, Chinese that or Chinese something else but simply professor of Chinese. This wide-ranging approach to research also characterises Andrew's approach to teaching. Is famous for some perhaps infamous classical documentary texts course taught at MA level to students preparing for research careers introduces the students to a wide range of writings in many genres and from many dynasties. Genres and dynasties being other limiting categories that Andrew easily reaches across. He is always willing and able to include texts on topics that students express an interest in. Like the traditional Chinese literati whose lifestyle he studies his knowledge of Chinese culture is encyclopedic and generously shared with characteristic modesty. I remember how once many years ago encountering him in a corridor and asking him about a line of classical poetry I had stumbled across and could not place. Without hesitation he instantly told me the author the poem title and the collection where I might find it. Adding that I should check because he wasn't sure. Up to this day I suspect that he was sure but he wanted to make sure that I checked and learned how to do these things myself in the future. Andrew's studies have taken him to many places and especially many libraries. In a preface to his 1981 Princeton dissertation he gives a long list of places he visited to do his research. Ending the sentence with a reassurance to his department chair who funded his travels that and I quote, contrary to what he thinks I did not visit the Riviera. In recent years Andrew has travelled especially frequently to and worked intensively with scholars in mainland China and Taiwan. At a very early stage he alerted us to the fact that Chinese classical scholarship was getting ahead of ours because of the revolutionary impact of digitisation and databases. He realised that access to databases would be crucial for the maintenance of our research quality and his observations helped to make the case for the library purchasing at least some of these resources which indeed we have done and we should be very grateful for that. As a head of department both in the late 1990s when I joined SOAS and more recently during his second stint which ends this year Andrew has never ceased to impress me with his constant good cheer. He is the only SOAS head of department I know who smiles every time you see him. While disposing of his tasks with admirable efficiency he never forgets the human touch. The little chat in the corridor the interesting colleagues' personal lives the word of support, the pat on the back. He may be heading a department known by the acronym CIA but there's nothing secretive about his actions. There was going to be a joke here about listening in on the phone conversations but I decided to leave that out. When Bernhardt sent round an email recently to inform everybody of Andrew's promotion to the professorship the email had the subject line our dear leader dot dot dot and this is indeed how I'm sure we all refer to him often when we think of him. Professor Low on behalf of all your colleagues your current and former students and all of us here today I congratulate you on your promotion and I thank you.


We have designated 2023 as the Year of the Youth, and so what we've done is we've started April to pretty much kickstart the Year of the Youth. We had some issues with Commonwealth because we had to attend a meeting in Pakistan, Pakistan had severe flooding so that was postponed, we were supposed to as a Commonwealth launch the Year of the Youth together but that has not happened and so we are using April pretty much as a springboard and we are going to continue with activities throughout the year. So what we've had so far, we've had the Easter summer camp, the Easter camps throughout some of the communities. We started with prayer and worship on the square because we truly knew that this is what was most needed by our young people. We have activities ongoing throughout the different communities to commemorate Youth Month. But what we will see is the annual Parliament. Let me start again because there was so much going on. There was so much going on. There was so much going on. What was melting? You said Parliament. Yes, yes, yes. So this year we see that Commonwealth has designated 2023 to be the Year of the Youth. And so most of our activities are channeled through the year. April would have been the month that we would have started simply because there were delays coming away from Commonwealth because of a meeting that was scheduled for January to ensure that all of Commonwealth started at the same time. But we've gone with our program, we started with prayer and worship on the square. We had our Easter camps throughout different communities. And we also have different activities ongoing in communities like Souffre, Grosjele and other constituencies. Parliament, Youth Parliament is coming up very soon. So I'm very excited about what young people will have to say for Youth Parliament. And the whole thrust is to have more frequent Youth Parliament. So we'll see later on in the year another Youth Parliament as opposed to in times past we only have one Youth Parliament. We believe that we need to give young people the opportunity to speak more. And so this government is definitely giving them that opportunity. So for the Year of the Youth and for this year our focus is on the fight against crime. So most of the thematic areas you will see will be the other end to that. We're expecting to have a dance competition later on. You'll see in the ministry and collaborate with the SLFE to bring out some messages as it put in to fighting against crime. And so I think that we're heading in the right direction and more things will be happening as the year goes by. So the Youth Connect is still a USA funded programme. But what about the other two initiatives, Cary Cypio and the other one? Yes, so all of these programmes are ongoing. As a matter of fact, we've heard some statements by the opposition indicating that nothing has gone on with you. First and foremost, it's absolutely fallacious for anybody who's a former Prime Minister to not understand the way things actually materialise but as it pertains to the ministry of youth development and sports and where funding comes from. Most of our projects are funded from the National Law Tree's authority. And so you may not necessarily see it reflected in the budget but it doesn't mean that things have not been done. We launched Scale 758, a platform that allows young people to go on to provide information on their CVs, job searchers and job seekers, employers, employees to connect. We identified that as one of the major issues for young people not getting job opportunities. And so this is a major activity we had. We had an official launch. It was televised, it was all over the place. So for anybody to indicate that nothing has happened with you, it either speaks to somebody who's not paying attention to young people or somebody who's just been disingenuous about the realities of what's happening. I mean, the Youth Economy Agency, there's a huge collaboration between the Youth Economy Agency and the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports. I mean, we've mentioned the fact that we're going to be semi-professionalising football and that is just not a football initiative because we bring in young people who are into photography, into videography, into other aspects of sports, physiotherapy, into the actual thrust to do things. We actually, from this year, we actually started an alternative sports season. Now, though it is called an alternative sports season, there's a reason why there's a twinning between youth and sports because in the alternative sports, you will see things like chess. You will see things like people who are into BMX riding. You will see things like off-roaders. You will see people that are into some sound clashes. These things are done by young people. So, at the end of the day, despite the fact that the nomenclature includes sports for any prime minister or former prime minister to indicate that nothing has been done in youth towards youth development, not only is that laughable, but it speaks to a desperation to find something on a minister that is grounded in youth development for so many years. And so, I think we are heading in the right direction. Can more be done? Yes. Will more be done? Yes. And so, I look forward to other activities for the year of the youth, and I think all of Saint Lucia will be very satisfied with what we are doing. Yours, but mine, I did. Yeah, Mr. Minister, we noticed that especially in the last couple of weeks, young Saint Lucia athletes have been showing, but what about the sustainability of these athletes? We know some of them, as soon as they drop out of school, if they don't have a scholarship, is there some kind of base, the base over that we keep the students in record and try to push them into? That's perhaps the best question I've received all year, or perhaps the best question I've ever received as a minister of youth for the last 19 months. Simply because anybody who has that question says to me that they understand the biggest difficulty facing sports development in Saint Lucia. Simply because it has never been addressed by any government. The biggest challenge for any sports minister, and if you follow sports development in Saint Lucia, we have the best athletes in the world from ages 19 and below. So if you look at any sort of measure of, let's just say per capita, of sports athletes in the world, between the age of one day to 19 years, Saint Lucia has produced some of the best in the world. The challenge for Saint Lucia is when those school leavers, or these individuals, leave school between 18, 19, and they enter into the work world. That is when they become less competitive on a global stage. That is an absolute fact, and I can give you a myriad of names of persons who captain West Indies did character very well, who were absolutely outstanding from the ages of, let's just say 12 to 19, and fell by the wayside. The answer to your question is that we must in Saint Lucia develop a high performance program. We have the capacity to do so. We've had many conversations on how we can do so. As a minister of sports, I can say that I have my disappointments in terms of the pace at which we've graduated or gravitated towards having a high performance program in Saint Lucia, but this is the way we can actually grab those young talents, nurture all aspects of their life, because now we are speaking about the nutrition, we are speaking about the compensation, we are speaking about the athletic abilities by way of weight training, physiotherapy, psychology, and there is an area, a one-stop area, that we can develop this high performance, and that is at the Sports Academy. To be clear, I as sports minister have said before coming in and will say and continue to see that it is a disservice to youth and sports development to spend anywhere in excess of $2 million and 20 athletes as opposed to spending that money on a high performance program, for those individuals we know have the talent at 17, 18, and 19 that we let go into the work world in the hotels that cannot be part of a high performance program that is trained appropriately to get the physiotherapy and the psychology that they need. It is a disservice to these athletes if at the end of the day we continue to gravitate towards a sports academy as opposed to a high performance program. Beach football, that's the professional line. You've been following closely. We initiated the first, pretty much the first step in beach football development in St. Lucia, as you correctly said. St. Lucia won a global medal, a gold medal in beach football at the under-17 level, and again it speaks to what happens from that age on because I had a picture sent to me of that under-17 team and where are they now? That was before my time, but I did have to ask myself that question. On the Easter weekend you would have seen the first ever Northern beach football competition with all indications. It was an absolute blast. The expectation is to spread beach football north, south, east and west. I've had conversations with the president of the St. Lucia Football Association, Mr. Cooper, on ensuring that we have more beach football, considering that we are surrounded by the sea and sand. And so we continue to have those conversations. We continue to liaise with some of the national trust and other areas that we can actually have those competitions because venue would be very important. We're able to use the Pigeon Island area from all indications, of course, with the music and the ambiance. It was successful, but we certainly hope that we spread it throughout St. Lucia, have a program that is sustained so that we can actually start exporting some of our beach footballers. I am sure, folks, that most of you are aware that the United Workers Party and more particularly Alan Shastney has been circulating a host of videos, presumably indicating that the land at Tapion was sold at a given price. I had reason rather to go on Alan Shastney's page. And when I saw the posting, I was flabbergasted. He posted that a given parcel of land, parcel 11, which was valued at some $6.5 million, was the land that we had allegedly sold. What picked my interest is that there were two renowned quantity surveyors in question. One who did the valuation in 2013 and one who did the current valuation. And basically I felt that two professionals could not have had such a vast difference in value for the same piece of vacant property known as parcel 11. One was 6.5 and the other 3.5. So we commenced our investigations. At the registry, there is no parcel at this point known as parcel 11. Parcel 11, which is the valuation which Alan Shastney showed, is no longer in existence. And I'll tell you what it is. Parcel 11 was a combination of parcel 50 and 51, which currently exists. In 2014, what is called a mutation or it is colloquially called a subdivision was done. This made parcel 11 no longer existent and it grew into two parcels, 50 and 51. What Alan Shastney dissentfully did, he took the valuation for the combined parcels when they were together known as parcel 11 and he purported this to have been the valuation of parcel 50, which was essentially a subset of parcel 11. Like I said, it's been nine years, parcel 11 has not been in existence. Parcel 11 was subdivided into two, parcel 50 and 51. 50 was sold and 51 is still vested in the National Housing Corporation. It stays on the ground. So all the videos, all the allegations, the scandal and everything else was premised on a lie. His actions, in my view, were fraudulent. His actions were deceitful. His actions were dishonest, not to mention reprehensible. And I'm calling on the leader of the opposition to issue an apology to the people of this country whom he quite glaringly attempted to deceive. In the house, I've already asked the speaker to make his valuation a document of the house and I will insist that he does. If he does not, I will ask that it be referred to the privileges committee again because we as a people cannot be represented by persons who seek to deceive us for political power. All right, let me just tell you.  It was subdivided into two. One is known as parcel 50, which is what was sold. One is known as parcel 51, which is retained by the seller. He took the valuation of the combined 50 and 51, which nine years ago existed together as parcel 11. Parcel 11, if you go to the registry, no longer exists. So in a surreptitious and deceitful way, he attempted to make persons believe that the valuation for the entire thing was the valuation for parcel 50, which was sold. Both of them, definitely. It's almost a mile away from the port of castries. You have to drive literally from the port. You drive onto the top road into Tapion and it is opposite where we call the madhouse or the old wellness center, converging on the sea by a cliff. In fact, there are several incidents of accidents, one which recently was fatal. Definitely not. And one of the things I want to say as well, if you look directly opposite that land, all of it was owned by NTC as well. It borders with the sea. All of it was sold by the very institution National Housing Corporation. It was sold at $2.7 million, which makes it in excess of $25 a square foot. Personally, I would not buy it. I would not buy it as a developer because you see the cost of rehabilitation of that land is quite high. But if you have the relevant ability to militate against the topography that currently exists, it can be made into good property. But as it stands now, if you visit it, there are lots of pictures I showed. I can send some pictures to you for dissemination. If it were me, I would never buy it. That is correct. There is also the situation where the ex-prime minister had given NTC a directive to buy land at the Calvary. And I spoke to several persons who are developers, and they are saying that this can be made into very nice land. But the cost of developing it, the amount of retaining walls that one would have to build makes it an investment that you really don't want to undergo because it will attract prices of between $40 and $50 a square foot given the magnitude of the infrastructural work that would have to be affected to make it a viable project. And that is the same as over there. No, let me correct that first. NTC did not deliver that verdict. It's a verdict that anyone can see through their eyes. The building is in a structurally unsound situation. Persons, the occupants are in harm's way. And NTC's consideration and sole consideration is the safety of the occupants.  You have pieces of concrete just falling on a daily basis. Not too long ago on a Saturday I was called, we had to put some more props, iron props, to uphold the balcony which is on the upper floor. So those are the kinds of exigencies that lend to persons probably being hurt. And we do believe that in the course of doing business the safety of the occupants is of paramount importance. And it is against that background, we decided that we can no longer have persons living under such conditions that at any time with the slightest of earthquakes, that building can collapse and lend to loss of life, possibly. Okay, the situation is that we would not have, I know, contrary to media reports and that's the other thing, the media always runs with fake news. You know, look at, look at, and that's true. I mean, let's face it, sometimes, some time ago the media confronted me with a fake piece of news in relation to a posting by United Park. What do you expect? You don't expect anything of substance that is true coming from those persons' mouths. So, you know, you just, you just, I don't make it newsworthy. However, as it relates to the CDC, what we did was we want to ensure we are taking it on a case-by-case basis, but we have written to persons, you will not believe that some of the CDCs, the persons in whose names the CDCs are registered, live in the US, live in England, who is using the CDC as a storage area, has a house of capacity and have a store in town, all sorts of things are happening because you have a situation where those CDCs go for as little as $145 a month in the middle of the city. So, who does not want to avail themselves to that kind of facility within the vicinity of the city? So, you know, there is reluctance in giving it up, but we have done our investigations and what we have found is that there are enough situations that lend themselves to getting persons who do not reside there, getting the leases terminated for occupancy by those persons who are vulnerable and are in harm's way. So, a lot of them have been written to. They have been given 30 days to vacate, after which we will take it from there. But rest assured, as it relates to those residents, we will do everything that is reasonably possible to ensure that there is a smooth transition of them to another comfortable area. Thank you very much. Okay, last one. You said, any city deliver verdict. Now you change your mind. Okay, good. How soon? Okay, but as I explained to you, we gave 30 days notice that that period is not up yet. It is only after the period is up. We know that most persons will comply and whatever difficulty the residue of the residents, we will take care of them on a kiss-by-kiss basis. But this building is a mark for demolition in the not-to-distant future. The beside of by saying that the situation that currently confronts our country from a security standpoint is unfortunate. It is one that we are deeply concerned about as an administration. Every life that is lost is one too many. And the government will spend no effort to ensure that we deploy all the resources at our disposal to fight in crime and criminality in this country. I know there have been attempts by some in the society to politicize this. Crime is not something to be politicized because at the end of the day, crime affects every facet of society. And in order for us to really get to the bottom of the situation as it obtains now, we need all hands on deck. And it is not just the government of Zanusha that must come forward and put forward all the solutions to the current situation as it relates to criminality in this country. There's a role for the opposition. There's a role for civil society organizations. There's a role for the family. Parents have a role in terms of how they orient their children. And that is the only way we will have long-term and durable solutions to fight in crime. Crime is a social construct. And for us as a government, we've appreciated and we've understood that in the fight against crime, it takes a lot more than just the deployment of law enforcement personnel. And that is why at every effort we have attempted to roll out social programs that will help the situation as it obtains in communities, particularly those communities where there tend to be a prevalence of criminal activity. It has to be a multi-pronged approach from here. Yes, we will deploy the police and the law enforcement personnel. The benefits of that would be short term, but the more long-term interventions they have to happen at the level of the church, at the level of the school, at the level of the family. And that is why we are currently in the budget process ensuring that the amount would have allocated for social programs in the past have been increased. And we're hoping that when agencies like the Ministry of Education, the Department of Equity begin to roll out their programs, we will touch families and we will be able to impact vulnerable communities in a more profound way that will eventually lead to a decrease in the criminality that seems to be taking our country by storm at the moment. It's important that these interventions are made early in the lives of the children who denounce wrong at a very early age. A simpler concept as it is, children have to be able to discern right from wrong. And if as adults we do not admonish children for the wrong that they do, they feel comfortable violating the guidelines that would be put in place for them in the home and even at school. And one thing I would say to students when I address them at assembly is that you break the school rule today and the consequences based on what form of punishment that the principal of the Dean of Discipline deemed necessary. When you graduate out of Form 5 and you are in society and you break the rules of society, it will no longer be the principal, but it will be the magistrate and the judge that you have to face, the police officer. So if at a very early age at the level of the preschool, the infant school and the primary school, we are able to teach them right from wrong and get them to understand that there is meriting conformity, especially in a social setting, we would be doing we would be doing a lot for our country in terms of creating a mindset that would cause these children to grow up and be responsible citizens. Well, as we speak, I have been discussing that matter with Dr. Pastor Kios Alfred, who is paired, you know, leading that charge on behalf of the Adventist Church. I think it's a very noble initiative. It is one that the government can identify with and I have given him a commitment as the Minister of Education that we will be working with the SD emission to ensure that the benefits that can be derived from such a program would be impacting schools across the country. Let me say that the SDH is not the only faith-based organization that is helping in the fight against crime. Only yesterday we saw hundreds of Roman Catholics, of course, led by the Archbishop himself taking to the streets of Euphot, with a view to sensitizing the community to the need for a more peaceful and more engaging environment in Euphot where people can return to the things that they would have done prior to the scourge that we saw in Euphot. So I want to take the opportunity to commend all the faith-based organizations that are helping in the fight against crime. As I said earlier, the fight against crime takes a lot more than just the deployment of law enforcement personnel. We have to continue engaging the populace. We have to continue the dialogue. And we have to make social interventions the results of which we may not be able to realize tomorrow, but down the road, I am sure those would impact us very positively as communities and as a country speaking holistically. That's a short question. We've seen in recent years, even recently, that there have been a string of school shootings in the United States. Children in Portugal and the behavior from that region. Is there any program in place or anything that the government or Ministry of Education is working on to ensure that this behavior does not reach out to us? I mean, God forbid that we would have to deal with one of those situations anytime soon. What I can tell you is that we've always taken school security very, very seriously. We have realized in the Ministry of Education that we do not have sufficient personnel, not just in terms of numbers, but expertise to lead the charge on our own as far as school security is concerned. And it is against that backdrop we were able to bring in Mr. Osbert Regis, retired police commissioner to help with the security apparatus of the school system. And his mandate would include more than just the safety of children whether they are on the road and in the classroom, but in addition to the school plan. And very importantly the extent to which we can have our students and teachers operate within a safe environment during the school day. But as I said, it would be a very sad day if we had to deal with what we see happening with such alarming regularity in the schools of the US. But we're taking nothing for granted. We are living no stone on turn to the confines of the resources we have at our disposal. We are doing our best to ensure that the entire school security situation as we know it is one that we stay on top of. And we will continue to provide a safe and secure environment for both our teachers and students so that the learning process can be facilitated. Our children will get the education that they rightfully deserve and they will grow up to become productive citizens in Central Asia.