One hundred and seventy-four year ago today, Commodore James Bremer presided over a ceremony that saw the Union Jack raised for the first time on Hong Kong Island, as the British formally took possession of their new crown colony.
Possession Point—just down the street from where I'm sitting right now—was the location for the auspicious event, though it's no longer on the coast thanks to major land reclamation. And for the next one hundred and fifty years, Hong Kong remained a faraway outpost of the British Empire.
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All that changed at the stroke of midnight on July 1st, 1997.
Even so, wandering around modern day Hong Kong, you can still find evidence of a rich colonial heritage strewn all over town. Sometimes, these traces are buried beneath layers of twenty-first century clutter and rather hard to find; other times they are on proud display, all polished and spotlit. And often, they're hiding in plain sight, purloined letters of Hong Kong's majestic past. These reminders may be anywhere; you just have to know where to look.
There's even a chance a few might be jangling about in your pocket, because coins minted during Hong Kong's time as a crown colony remain legal tender to the present. It doesn't happen every day, but it's certainly not astonishing to spy the noble profile of Queen Elizabeth II when examining your change. Over the past five years, I've assembled quite a nice collection of old Hong Kong coins, since I usually can't bring myself to spend them.
In fact, you can't help but see the remnants of an empire everywhere you look. It can be something as simple as the name of a road or a building: there's Jubilee Street, named to mark Queen Victoria's fiftieth year on the throne; Princess Margaret Hospital, in honor of the current monarch's younger sister; and Prince's Building. Even my office is located on Queen's Road Central, one of the main thoroughfares that runs through the heart of the business district.
Other appellations may not necessarily be royal, yet they still conjure up associations with faraway Britain: Salisbury Road, Old Bailey Street, Gloucester Road, Wellington Street, Oxford Road, High Street.
There's even a chance a few might be jangling about in your pocket, because coins minted during Hong Kong's time as a crown colony remain legal tender to the present. It doesn't happen every day, but it's certainly not astonishing to spy the noble profile of Queen Elizabeth II when examining your change. Over the past five years, I've assembled quite a nice collection of old Hong Kong coins, since I usually can't bring myself to spend them.
My collection of colonial-era coins
In fact, you can't help but see the remnants of an empire everywhere you look. It can be something as simple as the name of a road or a building: there's Jubilee Street, named to mark Queen Victoria's fiftieth year on the throne; Princess Margaret Hospital, in honor of the current monarch's younger sister; and Prince's Building. Even my office is located on Queen's Road Central, one of the main thoroughfares that runs through the heart of the business district.
Other appellations may not necessarily be royal, yet they still conjure up associations with faraway Britain: Salisbury Road, Old Bailey Street, Gloucester Road, Wellington Street, Oxford Road, High Street.
The organization formerly known as the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club dropped the first word of its name after the Handover, but still hosts races like the Queen Mother Memorial Cup and the Queen's Silver Jubilee Cup.
The organization still known as the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club cheekily opted to amended its Cantonese name only in 1997, retaining its regal moniker to this very day.
Jardine Matheson continues the practice of firing a cannon at noon each and every day, as immortalized by Noël Coward's playful tune Mad Dogs and Englishmen: "In Hong Kong, they strike a gong, and fire off a noonday gun/To reprimand each inmate who's in late." You can watch as an immaculately uniformed guard, with great pomp and flare, checks his watch and shoots a cannon over the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter in front of the Excelsior Hotel.
And, of course, you can still find expats tucking into fish and chips and washing it all down with pints of British beer in pubs across the SAR.
Some of my favorite mementos of Hong Kong's past are the dwindling examples of British post boxes, once bright red and now veiled under coats of green paint. Fewer than sixty of these precious colonial souvenirs remain in use.
One such pillar box sits outside the Peak Lookout, a restaurant I love atop Victoria Peak. It bears Queen Elizabeth II's royal cypher, QIIE. Another on Lamma Island is even older, from the reign of her grandfather, King George V, displaying his cypher: GvR.
Jardine Matheson continues the practice of firing a cannon at noon each and every day, as immortalized by Noël Coward's playful tune Mad Dogs and Englishmen: "In Hong Kong, they strike a gong, and fire off a noonday gun/To reprimand each inmate who's in late." You can watch as an immaculately uniformed guard, with great pomp and flare, checks his watch and shoots a cannon over the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter in front of the Excelsior Hotel.
And, of course, you can still find expats tucking into fish and chips and washing it all down with pints of British beer in pubs across the SAR.
Some of my favorite mementos of Hong Kong's past are the dwindling examples of British post boxes, once bright red and now veiled under coats of green paint. Fewer than sixty of these precious colonial souvenirs remain in use.
One such pillar box sits outside the Peak Lookout, a restaurant I love atop Victoria Peak. It bears Queen Elizabeth II's royal cypher, QIIE. Another on Lamma Island is even older, from the reign of her grandfather, King George V, displaying his cypher: GvR.
Old post box on Lamma
Near my apartment in Happy Valley, you can find one of the original boundary stones that marked the official limits of the city of Victoria; I must have walked past for years before I finally spotted it. So I reckon there are dozens more of these colonial leftovers—plaques, markers, emblems and memorials—just lurking about, waiting to be re-discovered or, perhaps, content to simply still exist.
Feeling in an especially Anglophilic disposition this past weekend, I enlisted Sarah for a colonial stroll around Central to see how many vestiges of the empire we could find. I had a ticket to see The Imitation Game on Saturday afternoon to set the mood, and Sarah met me as I exited the cinema.
We rode the Escalator up through SoHo, grabbed some beers at 7-Eleven (where, appropriately, my change included a Queen Elizabeth ten cent coin from 1982), and headed for the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens, where there's a statue of King George VI, looking particularly grand.
King George VI surveys the Hong Kong Botanic and Zoological Gardens
At the foot of the gardens is Upper Albert Road, named after Queen Victoria's beloved prince consort. Here stands imposing Government House, the official residence of many of Hong Kong's colonial rulers and modern chief executives.
Looking through the gates of Government House
We walked down Albert Path to Ice House Street, pausing for a moment atop Duddell Street's stone steps to admire their four iconic gas lamps. These were manufactured and installed between 1875 and 1889, and, as described by the Antiquities and Monuments office, can be found "surmounting the balustrades at the top and foot of the steps..." They are Hong Kong's last remaining gas lamps, and still glow from dusk until dawn.
The Duddell Street gas lamps
Only a few minutes away is beautiful Saint John's Cathedral, where the foremost pew—once reserved for members of the government and visiting royals—still bears the Royal Crest. Meanwhile, a plaque outside points out that HSBC donated the bells in the tower on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation. With its whirring ceiling fans and stained glass, it only takes a bit of imagination to envision the church full of faithful Britons far from home in Hong Kong's earliest days as a colony.
Plaque at Saint John's Cathedral
Next up: Statue Square, home to another old post box—with a quirk! Also from the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, this one bears no royal cypher; instead, there's the Crown of Scotland. You see, Scotland and England were united under the Acts of Union in 1707, and the first Queen Elizabeth ruled from 1558 to 1603. Thus, Scotland never had a Queen Elizabeth until 1952, and many Scots objected to the new Queen Elizabeth being referred to as "the Second" and the QIIE cypher being used there. Some post boxes bearing the design were violently attacked so Royal Mail placated the situation by placing the crown on all new boxes destined for Scotland. Two of these made their way to Hong Kong, and one still serves its original purpose in the heart of the city.
Statue Square's colonial post box—note the Scottish crown!
At one point, Statue Square contained likenesses of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, King Edward VII, King George V, Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary. Alas, during the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong, many of these were shipped out to be melted down. Most were never recovered, but Queen Victoria's was returned after the war and relocated her namesake park in Causeway Bay, where she still sits. The only statue found in the square today is that of Sir Thomas Jackson, once a big shot banker over at HSBC.
Moving north through Statue Square, Sarah and I came upon the Cenotaph, paying quiet tribute to "the glorious dead" of the First and Second World Wars. It was built in 1923, and is an exact copy of London's Cenotaph designed by Sir Edward Lutyens. Originally conceived to honor those killed in WWI, it was later updated to include those who died during WWII. Later still, eight Chinese characters were added in remembrance of the many who died in Hong Kong under the Japanese Occupation. "May their martyred souls be immortal, and their noble spirits endure," they read.
The Cenotaph
We finally traipsed over to neighboring Chater Garden, which hides a relic of its own, a weighty stone slab "laid by the Duke of Connaught K.G.K.T.K.P. & C. On the 2nd April 1890 In Commemoration of the commencement of the Praya reclamation works." The Duke of Connaught refers to Prince Arthur, third son of Victoria and Albert, who participated in an official visit to Hong Kong during a massive land reclamation. The soon-to-be completed waterfront praya was named Connaught Road in his honor, and it remains a major street to the present day, though subsequent reclamation has rendered it landlocked.
Relic hiding in Chater Garden
We lingered in Chater Garden for some time, enjoying the perfectly clear night and the views of Central's towering skyscrapers from Queensway, the road bordering the garden that links Queen's Road Central and Queen's Road East.
Queensway and the towering skyscrapers, Bank of China Tower and Cheung Kong Center
And what more fitting way to end the day could there be than with some tasty fish and chips and a bottle of cider by the Central Ferry Piers?
