... HONG KONG ...
The Classic Age Peter Moss
... CHAPTER 1 ...
An Amphitheatre of Unending Drama As a professional naval officer, Hong Kong’s colonial progenitor, Captain Elliot, had immediately appreciated that Victoria harbour was one of the world’s finest, and would provide an ideal haven for trade. Even though not all of his contemporaries agreed with him, this superbly sheltered anchorage – right from the outset – acted as a magnet for ships from all over the world. It rapidly vindicated Elliot’s foresight by proving the very reason for Hong Kong’s existence. Through it flowed the lifeblood of commerce on which the city depended. All activity either revolved around it or threaded its crowded shipping lanes. The entire maritime world was in transition, undergoing a great sea change in its conversion from sail to steam, and the harbour, where paddle-steamers rode alongside the last paragons of tea clippers and three-masters that had so long ruled the waves, became a picturesque arena in which the two converged and overlapped. Artists of the camera soon joined those of the canvas and easel in recording the unending drama of this natural amphitheatre.
[ 8-9 / 300 ] ... HO N G KO N G : THE C L A SSIC AG E ...
[ 20-21 / 300 ] . .. OPENI NG T H E FLOODGAT E S . . .
The Woman’s Lot Confucianism became the pervasive doctrine to promote the belief in women’s ‘natural place’. Confucius himself did not inherently denigrate women, although he placed them at the lower end of the patriarchal family structure. Yet the assumption, through successive ages, that the respective social place and expected behaviour of men and women were quite distinct, was based on Confucian hierarchical precepts. This subjugation of women was epitomised by the practice of crippling and binding the feet from infancy. Though the process made its victims
completely incapable of any strenuous physical labour outside the home, and indeed rendered them unable to walk any great distance without aid, women with bound feet had no greater difficulty preparing meals or doing general household chores. Arranged marriages occurred at an early, often prepubescent age, following which husbands regularly took concubines who might bear them children in second or third families. Clothing changed little through all the years of Manchu rule, comprising traditional collars and sleeves on full-length gowns worn over trousers. [ 20 - 21 / 30 0 ] ... O PEN IN G THE FLO O D G ATES ...
Solemn Façades and Columned Arcades
[ 44-45 / 300 ] ... VI CTORI A H ARBOUR ...
The age of the great tea clippers was long past. Imitated by British shipyards from designs perfected in Nova Scotia and New England, those endearingly magnificent craft had piled on great panoplies of sail to race their cargoes to London and back, bearing out the spring crop of new tea and returning from India with bales of opium. Though splendidly archaic, it was clear that some of Hong Kong’s pioneering spirit of adventure had gone with them.
The panorama from the Peak now afforded a different degree of satisfaction, bound up with the growing solidity and profusion of both municipal and mercantile architecture. Size and girth being regarded as both the surest resistance to the onslaughts of typhoons and the clearest denominator of affluence, the city fathers built ever larger and loftier monuments to their collective wealth. Victoria’s spacious avenues and public plazas were overlooked by solemn façades and columned arcades.
The city was taking on an unmistakable air of substance and permanence with the presence of Butterfield & Swire 1897, Asia Life Insurance 1890, Cable & Wireless 1904, Hong Kong Club 1897, Prince’s Building 1904 and Queen’s Building 1899. But its thoroughfares were as yet uncrowded, ringing hollowly to the clatter of carriages and the footfall of sedan-chair bearers, echoing to the cries of vendors and at times, in the long reaches of hot afternoons, falling silent in siesta. [ 4 4 - 4 5 / 30 0 ] ... V ICTO RIA HARBO U R ...
... CHAPTER 7 ...
Little England in the Far East The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 greatly shortened the distance between London and Hong Kong and profoundly altered the patterns of world trade. Even more revolutionary was the arrival of the telegraph, thanks to the initiative of the Eastern Extension Company in laying the first submarine cable from India to Hong Kong in 1871. This became an umbilical cord connecting Hong Kong to the great heartland of Empire on the other side of the planet, somehow shortening the apron strings and bringing England that little bit closer. For those surveying the harbour from the heights of the Peak, and from its fellow promontories along the spine of Hong Kong Island, the view presented a striking allegory. The more perceptive might see the Kowloon peninsula descending like a giant pestle into the concave mortar of the island’s shoreline, to hammer out the special alchemy that invested this entrepot with its unique frisson of excitement and success. For them it could seem a headily emblematic reminder of the mighty engine of Empire at work. A statue of Queen Victoria, with Prince’s Building as backdrop (opposite), commemorated the Diamond Jubilee of 1897. European architecture came to Hong Kong filtered through the experience of India. Many of Hong Kong’s early buildings were therefore lighter and more elegant than their British contemporaries.
[ 6 0-6 1 / 300 ] ... HO N G KO N G : THE C L A SSIC AG E ...
[ 7 6 -7 7 / 300 ] ... LI T T LE ENGLAND I N T H E FA R E A ST . . .
The General Post Office Preceding the Supreme Court by a year, the General Post Office opened in 1911 on what was then newly reclaimed land at the conjunction of Des Voeux Road Central and Pedder Street. Owing to the necessity of locating it as near as possible to the shore, in order to receive and dispatch correspondence via mail ships and ocean liners, the GPO had already moved on two earlier occasions to follow the advance of the waterfront northward into the harbour. From 1841 to 1846 it had stood above St John’s Cathedral on Garden Road, after which it shifted to Queen’s Road Central, opposite D’Aguilar Street. Seen here behind a clutter of bobbing sampans and wallah-wallahs, its 1911 manifestation, opposite Blake Pier, was its grandest yet, constructed in typically Edwardian municipal style, with ornately carved escutcheons and embrasures. This building was demolished in 1976, and replaced by the current utilitarian curtain-wall office block of The New World Tower. [ 7 6 - 7 7 / 30 0 ] ... LITTLE EN G LAN D IN THE FAR EAST ...
[ 84-85 / 300 ] ... LI T T LE ENGLAND I N T H E FA R E A ST . . .
The City of Victoria 1970 Ten years later the urban landscape of Central had undergone further dramatic changes. City Hall had sprung up alongside the Star Ferry car park in 1962, with its administrative block at the lower centre of this 1973 aerial view and its concert hall and theatre to the left. Beyond the latter the Cable and Wireless Building and Hong Kong Club were still in place but foundation work had commenced on what would later be the (now demolished) Hotel Furama. Other bastions around Statue Square were still there, but Prince’s Building had been replaced by a tower block in 1965, connected by a pedestrian footbridge to the adjoining Mandarin Oriental Hotel that had taken the place of Queen’s Building in 1963. Alongside the latter, St George’s Building was undergoing demolition. Perhaps most striking of all, the former Murray Parade Ground, to the left rear of the Bank of China, had been replaced by the 1963 Hilton Hotel at the foot of Garden Road, while another reclamation had filled in that area of the sea where Blake Pier had stood, just off the right hand frame of the picture. Clearly visible in this image is the Feng Shui corridor descending from the Peak via Government House and the Colonial Secretariat to pass through the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank with its unobstructed view of the sea. [ 8 4 - 8 5 / 30 0 ] ... LITTLE EN G LAN D IN THE FAR EAST ...
Lugard believed that young Chinese men and women, educated in a Hong Kong university, would form an invaluable pool of talent for China. Taking their places in the upper echelons of Chinese officialdom, they would demonstrate how far a British Crown Colony could contribute to China’s affairs. He was to be proved right in a way he possibly did not anticipate. Dr. Sun Yat-sen 孫逸仙 (seated here on a return visit to Hong Kong in 1912) graduated from the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese in July 1892 and led the revolution that dethroned the Qing Dynasty in 1912. The Government presented a spacious site at West Point and the University of Hong Kong opened in September 1913 with medical and engineering faculties. Two hundred students had enrolled by 1917. The main hall and library were wrecked during the Japanese occupation but the University reopened in 1948.
[ 1 02-103 / 300 ] ... LORD LUGARD ...
The Qing court was still in power on 10 September 1909 when Lugard posed on the steps of Government House with members of his Legislative Council and a royal visitor from Peking, Prince Tsai Hsun 載洵. Standing on Lugard’s left is Yuan Shu-hsun 袁樹勛, Viceroy of Canton. Other guests included Sir Ho Kai 何啟 (third row on the left), Arthur Brewin, Registrar General (behind Ho Kai), Lau Chu-pak 劉鑄伯, prominent
member of the Chinese community (same row as Ho Kai, centre), Ng Li-hing 吳利興, merchant and benefactor (on Lau’s left), Sir Boshen Wei Yuk 韋玉, member of the Legislative Council (between Lau and Ng), Sir Paul Chater (second from left, third row from the back), Dr. D.R. Law, head of Taikoo Dockyard (fourth row on the right) and A.H. Harris of Chinese Maritime Customs (second row, right).
[ 10 2- 10 3 / 30 0 ] ... LO RD LU G ARD ...
Confucianism and the Role of Women According to the Confucian structure of society, women at every level were to occupy positions subordinate to those of men. Most Confucians accepted the subservience of women as natural and proper, while at the same time they accorded women honour and power as mother and mother-in-law within the family. However, not all women were prepared to put up with this sexual inequality, and throughout China’s history there have been those who proved exceptions to the rule. As far back as the Six Dynasties, Hua Mulan 花木蘭 posed as a man in order to serve in the army and achieve such prowess that she was personally rewarded by the emperor. Much more recently, at the dawn of the 20th century, the Empress Dowager Cixi 慈禧太后 is said to have inspired the siege of the foreign legations in Peking. [ 1 28-129 / 300 ] ... T H E PASSI NG PARADE .. .
As the 20th century advanced, women throughout China rebelled against the practice of having their toes cruelly restricted from childhood, in order to cater to men’s perverse desire for tiny feet, while in the more cosmopolitan and enlightened cities like Peking, Shanghai and Hong Kong, women emerged increasingly from the shadows, emboldened by the example of the famous Soong sisters, who married the three most powerful men in China. Even with feet unbound, however, women continued to pose, in early studio portraits, as though they were still meek, compliant creatures, while secretly delighting in the opportunity to be photographed fashionably dressed in all-encompassing brocades. [ 128 - 129 / 30 0 ] ... THE PAS S IN G PARAD E ...
‘The Red Blood of Trade’ Sir Frederick Lugard, who had succeeded Nathan as Hong Kong’s fourteenth Governor, happened to be absent from the colony when the formal opening ceremony took place at the tip of the Kowloon peninsula on 1 October 1910. Standing in for him was the Officer Administering the Government, Sir Henry May, who two years later would succeed Lugard as Governor. The South China Morning Post ventured to predict that ‘the red blood of trade will flow to and from this centre of British interests... it opens to the interior of China the greatest emporium of the East’. Sir Henry May, in formal attire and solar topee (above) joined official guests for a trip to the border. A year later the Chinese section was opened and there was a tremendous turn-out of Chinese dignitaries arriving by sedan chair for the ceremonial inauguration at the newly completed railway station in Canton. [ 1 36-137 / 300 ] ... T H E KOW LOON CANTON R A ILWAY . . .
[ 1 3 6 - 1 3 7 / 30 0 ] ... THE KOWLO O N CAN TO N RAILWAY ...
Hail and Farewell
Hong Kong’s first ever election for a chief executive was held on 11 December 1996. Tung Chee Hwa 董建華 emerged the easy winner from a four-cornered contest for leadership of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Other contestants were Peter Wu Kwong-Ching 吳光正 (left) Simon Li Fook Sean 李福善 (second left) and Chief Justice Yang Ti-Liang 楊鐵樑, seen here with Mr Tung, just weeks before the election, at the annual dinner of the Hong Kong Progressive Alliance on 7 November 1996. Born in Shanghai, Tung had moved to Hong Kong with his family when he was ten. His father, C.Y. Tung 董浩雲, became a successful entrepreneur in Hong Kong’s shipping sector and founder of the Orient Overseas Line. Tung Chee Hwa graduated from the University of Liverpool and, as elder son, took over his father’s business after the latter’s death in 1982. A former member of the Governor’s Executive Council, Tung was an old acquaintance of Patten, with whom he is seen (right) on the steps of Government House. [ 280-281 / 300 ] ... END OF EM PI RE ...
Closure of Tamar
The Royal Navy’s last base in the Far East was decommissioned on 11 April 1997 – exactly 100 years to the day from the arrival in these waters of the accommodation ship HMS Tamar, after which the base was named. Tamar had by then been relocated to Stonecutter’s Island, off Kowloon, so that its original installations in Central could be released for occupation by China’s People’s Liberation Army in readiness for the handover. When Governor Patten visited Stonecutter’s Island to inspect the guard of honour for the decommissioning ceremonies, First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Jack Slater led the military party. [ 28 0 - 28 1 / 30 0 ] ... EN D O F EM PIRE ...
Hong Kong: The Classic Age is more than a voyage into the past. Spanning the era of tea clippers in the 1860s to the departure of HMS Britannia, bearing away the last colonial governor at midnight on 30 June 1997, it resurrects Hong Kong’s crucial formative epoch through a stunning range of photographs that vividly reconstruct what that earlier community looked like, and what it meant to live here in those very different times. It transports the reader on an often tumultuous journey, from the reckless gamble of Hong Kong’s beginnings to its spectacular epiphany as Britain’s last and most famous imperial outpost.