Blogging... Walk The Talk

Please come to a talk to be given by David Wong and Stefan White at the Hong Kong Museum of History on Thursday, 14 Dec. 2006 at 7:00 PM in conjunction with the Hong Kong Anthropological Society.

The talk is entitled:

Postcolonial "Imagined Communities" --- The Curiously Divergent Stories Of Hong Kong and Singapore

The talk will be given in English. Please also join us for a self-paying dinner to be held after the talk. More details can be found below.

POSTCOLONIAL "IMAGINED COMMUNITIES"
The Curiously Divergent Stories
Of Hong Kong and Singapore

An Anthropological Talk by David Wong and Stefan White
Thursday, 14 Dec. 2006 at 7:00 PM
To be held at The Hong Kong Museum of History,
Lecture Theatre, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui

All are welcome
(space is, however, limited to 140 seats)


Both Singapore and Hong Kong were British colonial entrepôt ports
started in the first half of the 19th century, with many similarities in their history and governance. Both were made colonies of Britain in a contested manner and inherited positive and negative legacies of colonialism. But while Singapore has recreated an "imagined community," based on the founding myth of Sir Stamford Raffles over the last four decades, Hong Kong has yet to create a compelling historical narrative that serves as a unifying mythology for its citizens. In the talk, the speakers will explore the creation process and the realities of these two historical narratives, and how their existence impacts on each city's ability to attract cultural or heritage tourists.

David Wong and Stefan White operate Walk the Talk, an interpretive heritage service, in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Following the lecture, you are invited to a self-paying dinner with the speaker.


This talk is a joint presentation of

THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY

and

THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY

Labels: history, Hong Kong, Singapore

Another snippet from the Rev. James Legge's memoirs. As the man first stepped ashore in Hong Kong in 1843, by the 1870s he was one of the longest residents of the Colony. He recalled to some younger men how the drains used for catchwaters and sewage used to wreak havoc with law and order in Hong Kong:

“Bands of Robbers attempted to carry out their attempts by tunneling from the large drains under the premises which they had marked. There was a rumor of a scheme to re-enact the gunpowder plot by means of a tunnel under the cathedral, when the governor, the bishop, and the congregation were to be blown up. The facts of this case, however, if there were any, I could never satisfactorily ascertain. The most successful exploit of this kind was perpetrated so late as January 1865, by a gang who tunneled by the hard labour of several weeks right under the treasury of the Central Bank of India, and carried of upwards of $100,000 in gold bullion and notes. In 1863 twenty-two prisoners made their escape from the gaol by tunneling under it into a drain; and no long after, I did the service to the Government of disconcerting a scheme on a larger scale, by which within a few hours, eighty-nine men would have got away."

Perhaps it explains why Hong Kong to this day does not have a centralized manhole system, requiring endless rounds of construction to dig up and put back roads while workers lay cables and fix rusty pipes...

Labels: drains, history, Hong Kong, robberies

We take for granted sometimes here in Hong Kong the amazing public transport system we have throughout the city. Considering the price of property here, the cost of buses, ferries, MTR and particularly the taxis are quite cheap. The low fares of the cabs in particular seem to impress many visitors.

Yet it has always been part of deliberate government policy to keep transport charges as low as possible. I found a fascinating document from 1901, entitled, "Report of Commission on Chair and Jinricksha coolies," which basically complained about how the coolies running the chairs, following a strike they undertook a few years previous, were unwilling to take passengers for the same low fares they enjoyed in the good old days of the 1880s. These men were literally taking passengers on the power of their muscles alone, and of course our sympathies today are with the coolies. But things were not so clear to the Legislative Councillors enquiring about the cost of a chair:

At present, the minimum ricksha fare is 5 cents for a quarter of an hour. If a person takes a ricksha from the Clock Tower [a landmark then at the corner of Queen's Road and Pedder Street, demolished in 1911 - Ed.] to the Hongkong Club or Hongkong Bank [Christ, it's a 5 minute walk! - Ed.] he must pay 5 cents.

This seems to be an unnecessarily large fare. We therefore advocate ricksha rates of 2, 3, and 5 cents for 5, 10 and 15 minutes respectively. Distance fares, as in the case of garis [an Indian term for a horse-drawn cab - Ed.], might also be introduced. The difficulty of carrying the necessary money can be overcome by adopting a system of checks for these several amounts. These checks should be saleable at the Treasury and Police Stations in Colony and could be redeemed by the coolies on presentation at the Treasury in office hours.

Greatcare would have to be taken to guard against the acceptance, for redemption, of forged checks, not issued by the Treasury or a Police Station.

So these checks were like Club Med beads...except not really at all.

Labels: Central, history, Hong Kong

I have done some poking around the old papers on Kennedy Road to satisfy the curiosity of our redoubtable reader, Stubbs, who asked about the old mansion that Sir Gordon Wu wants to knock down (amongst many other buildings) to create his 2,000 room Mega Tower Hotel in Wanchai.

While I have not yet tracked down the past ownership of the building, I did stumble across the 'ravings of Hong Kong's most obnoxious expat', Hemlock, of course, talking about Sir Gordon's vanity project. He referred to Kennedy Road as "a road designed for rickshaws." Indeed, he is correct inthat it was not meant for real traffic, and even rickshaws were banned. In 1883, a regulation was made by the Governor to the effect that:

1. No wheeled Vehicles or Horses shall be allowed on the Promenade known as Kennedy Road.

2. In no case shall more than two Chairs be allowed to go abreast on this road.

There were evidently problems with people and/or other sedan chairs, borne entirely by sets of 2, 4, or 6 profusely straining coolies (depending on the obesity of the occupant), knocking each other over. They hadn't thought of everything, though, because Governor Bowen added this regulation to the mix in 1887:

3. No kites shall be flown from this road.

One can only imagine the horror and tragedy.

All of which draw attention to the fact that the road was certainly not meant for heavy traffic. Certainly, Sir Gordon's building of over 2000 rooms on that road would be rather a major burden added to congestion in the area. His suggestion that at peak morning hours, only 6 trips by car for every 100 rooms would originate from the hotel's entrance on Kennedy Road was rather... optimistic.

* Update *

This regulation was finally repealed in 1898 after some widening of the road, but only for rickshas and such:

1. The regulations made by the Governor-in-Council on the 20th day of May, 1887, are hereby repealed.

2. In no case shall more than two Chairs be allowed to go abreast on Kennedy Road.

3. No kites shall be flown from Kennedy Road.

4. Wheeled vehicles will be allowed on Kennedy Road. The expression "wheeled vehicle," as used in these Regulations, shall mean a ricksha, bicycle, tricycle, or other similar machine, and a perambulator or other similar machine.

5. Wheeled vehicles must go round the bends of Kennedy Road at a moderate speed.

So, rickshas were alright, but not if they went too fast. And flying a kite on Kennedy Road was still out, as was having a sedan chair race!

Labels: history, Hong Kong, Wanchai

Quite fitting, really, that the old pier of the Star Ferry would be retired on Remembrance Day weekend. For like some of the octagenarians in their old uniforms and with their medals on Sunday, the service (but not the pier itself, built in 1957) was a veteran of World War II. These quaint, attractive pictures by H.L. Tam may remind some of us of the memories we had of the Ferry - as attraction, as conveyance, as part of Hong Kong. Some more photos on the wiki entry here (more photos can be found all over flickr).

I was fortunate enough also last week to go on a junk trip to Lamma that started from Queen's Pier, sadly like the Star Ferry no longer permitted to go on. It was a great trip except for the very beginning - the choppiness of the harbour was incredible, far worse than I remember it, and will only get worse still as the harbour shrinks further due to land reclamation.

When the ferry first started in the 1870s or early 1880s (nobody quite knows when) thanks to Dorabjee Naorojee, the distance between Hong Kong and Kowloon seemed vast. This Parsee immigrant was the first cross-harbour commuter, as his hotel concerns and office were on Hong Kong side, but his home and family were on Kowloon side in Tsim Sha Tsui. He was reminded of the 'Evening Star' in the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem 'Crossing the Bar' every evening that it was time to go home for dinner, and named his first ferry boat 'Evening Star' in its honour.

The journey shall still go on, but it will be shorter than before, and it will terminate in Central at the new artificially Edwardian pier by the other ferries to the outlying islands. The overhead walkway to the new terminal in Central still has not been completed. I suppose I will be able to become used to the odd design, based at least in frontal facade to the older pier of World War I vintage.

But what I think will hurt the ferry service is the fact that it is so far away from the old heart of Central. We could, to paraphrase the words of a recently departed American Secretary of Defense named Donald Rumsfeld, call Statue Square and the Landmark 'Old Central' and the IFC and the future buildings along the waterfront as 'New Central', but I think that misses the point of how easy it once was to get from even someplace on, say Ice House Street or Pacific Place to the ferry. Now it will be harder, and I suspect many of those current riders may ultimately say that the added hassle of walking 300 or 400 meters more will not be worth the hassle. The Central Star Ferry terminal will thus become more tourist attraction and less of a real conveyance for many people, fossilizing it and making it somehow less real to all of us.

What a shame. Farewell, Ferry by City Hall. Thanks for the memories!

Labels: Central, history, Hong Kong, Star Ferry

As you may expect from the title, today is my 33rd birthday. Given the frequency with which I have trawled through past editions of the Hong Kong Legco minutes, I was interested to see what was debated on November 14th, 1973, just a day after my birth, and probably on the same day if you take the 14-hour time difference with Park Ridge, Illinois into account.

Here's what I found. Mr. James Wu, the founder and chairman of Maxim's restaurants and caterers, had some usually sharp and acerbic comments about corruption in Hong Kong in 1973. Thank goodness things have gotten better since then:

Whilst corruption exists in all societies it has certainly gotten to be intolerably rampant in Hong Kong in recent years. Not only illegal businesses pay "protection money" but honest businessmen in their rightful claim for government service or permits are too often looked upon as being "square" and "inarticulate" [forgive me for not finding a suitable translation for the Cantonese "shuk shing"], it they fail to "grease the machine", thus to suffer from undue neglect and unfair competition. The cumbersome process of British law, and the face-conscious department chiefs who, circumstantial evidence notwithstanding, would jump to the defence instead of an investigation of his subordinates at the suggestion of corruption, are aggravating the situation.

The majority of Hong Kong people also lived in tiny, tiny places. If we think that Hong Kong families suffer today, just listen to this comment from Mr. Hilton Cheong-Leen:

I hope that the honourable Secretary for Housing will be able to make a statement as to how soon a minimum of 50 square feet living space per person can be provided in public housing during the current 10-year programme.

Mr. Cheong-Leen also addressed the causes of corruption, which he felt inextricably linked to the failure of legitimacy on the part of the colonial regime. It had just been the year before that the word from England had come down that Hong Kong was no longer to be referred to as a Colony, but just as a Dependent Territory:

Eliminating the casues of curroptuon is not only the setting up of an Independent Anti-Corruption Commission...It also involves the active co-operation and the right attitudes on the part of all citizens who share the vision of a more just society where there is no place for such causes of corruption.

This demands firm moral leadership on the art of the leaders who govern Hong Kong.

I would suggest that the Administration's image as a government with firm moral leadership has to come through even more clearly than it has in the past.

The Government has to show through practical measures and through sincere and well-balanced declarations of intent that it really cares for the people.

To strengthen the morale in the top leadership in the Civil Service, more local officers should be given the opportunity to reach top posts and to demonstrate that they can serve the people with dedication and without anybureaucratic conceit.

Up to this point, all of the senior servants in Hong Kong were still British. It would be another ten years before there was a significant increase in senior Chinese in the civil service, but Mr. Cheong-Leen's courage to speak up on the subject certainly planted the seed for self-governance of a Chinese Hong Kong by the Chinese themselves. As Mr. Cheong-Leen, who had been newly-appointed that year, was the first elected Chinese representative to Legco, he perhaps represented the vanguard of more broad-based changes in governance of the 'Territory'.

Sir Lee Quo-Wei, a knight of the Empire and the longtime chairman of the Hang Seng Bank, spoke surprisingly on 'birth control', apparently a problem of the Age. Surprising, now that Hong Kong has the lowest birthrate in the World, all efforts of our Catholic Chief Exec notwithstanding:

...I strongly urge that Government will now find it expedient to formulate a long-advocated Government population policy to implement a family planning porgramme. It is essential that such a programme should...embrace all phases of activities concerned with population growth. I would like to propose that a Working Committee be formed to study the whole question of population and the most appropriate means of encouraging the reduction of future birth rates.

It seems Hong Kong found a solution to the problem in the interim. I suspect it is simply, hard work.

I suppose I realize that I am now getting old, when so much has changed in Hong Kong since my birth. It is, after all, over the standard measure of a generation. Yet, rather than fearful of my mortality, this little investigation of the happenings of November 14th, 1973, only served to remind me that the passage of time is good - for us, and for our city, it has brought undeniably positive change.

Labels: birthrate, corruption, history, Hong Kong

As we've seen in previous pages, much of the entrepreneurial impetus amongst the foreigners in Hong Kong came from the redoubtable Scotsmen, who with their drive and canny investment sense did very well indeed for themselves.

Here though, I shall quote for you a few lines from perhaps the first travel guidebook to Hong Kong (as well as several other cities in China besides). The Victorian always felt quite comfortable classifying the various races and ethnic groups he came across. While today it might make the members of those groups feel rather akin to having been impaled with a needle and put into some sort of collector's box of human taxonomy, then it seemed a rather accepted thing to do. I suppose if we were to find an alien race living on the moon or on a nearby planet, we would unhestiatingly offer our most accurate stereotypes to those less knowledgeable, and would do for some time to come.

At any rate, without further ado:

In the first place, then, to dispose of the philological question as briefly as possible, we must premise that the syllables "Pun-ti" denote a native or original indweller of the soil, whilst "Hak-ka," on the contrary, signifies a stranger, or as we might phrase it, an immigrant from afar. These are terms which must be taken in just such a sense as that in which they would be understood in Ireland, were a Galway cottier, of the true Milesian type, to speak of the descendants of long-buried generations of Scottish settlers in the Northern counties, as "inthruders on the soil of Ould Ireland," while the amiable feelings our Galwegian would probably cherish with reference to his thriftier neighbours, would further form an exact parallel to the sentiments which impel the "Pun-ti" in Hongkong and on the mainland to make such frequent appeals to the bamboo-pole, the gingal, and the fighting irony. For if a Chinese Scotsman be imaginable, he exists surely in the laborious, saving, prolific and irrepressible Hak-ka, who has thriven and multiplied in his constant migrations toward the South, in such degree that he has now for many years been the object of bitter hatred on the part of the more supine "native" whom he supplants.

Yes, indeed the British were bemused onlookers in the early days of the colony when battles between the Hakka and the Punti Cantonese took place in the 1850s and 1860s. There was a full scale ethnic war, in fact, on in Tsim Sha Tsui just after the British took possession in 1860. One reason for this was the fact that many of the leaders of the Taiping Rebellion were in fact Hakka, which only deepened the divisions between the races.

Labels: Hakka, history, Hong Kong