MacaoPioneers of The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city

Pioneers of Macao The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the cityAuthorMark O´NeillEditor Donal ScullyPublisherMacaulinkDesignerFernando ChanCollectionSuma OrientalCirculation500PrintingWelfare Printing, MacauISBN978 ‑99965 ‑59 ‑20 ‑4Macao, September 2018With Support from

MacaoPioneers of The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the cityMark O´Neill

ContentsChapter 1: Zheng Guan ‑ying 7Chapter 2: Lou Kau 23Chapter 3: Zhan Tian ‑you 35Chapter 4: Sir Robert Ho Tung 49Chapter 5: Dr Sun Yat ‑sen 67Chapter 6: Kou Ho ‑ning 79Chapter 7: Lou Lim Ieoc 93Chapter 8: Leung Yan ‑ming 103Chapter 9: Fu Tak Iam 111Chapter 10: Wong Man ‑dat and Lo Sai ‑dong 125Chapter 11: Xian Xinghai 131Chapter 12: Florence Li Tim Oi 145Chapter 13: Domingos Lam 163

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city6

Zheng Guan ‑yingChapter 1

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city8

Chapter 1: Zheng Guan-ying9Reformer and writer cast a giant shadow over his generationOne of the most popular sites for visitors to Macao is the Mandarin’s House, an imposing private mansion and a compound of rooms and courtyards covering 4,000 square metres. It was in this house that Zheng Guan ‑ying, a senior Chinese official and businessman, wrote one of the most influential books of the late 19th century; it shaped the thought process for generations of Chinese.In 1893, Zheng published the first five chapters of Words of Warning in a Prosperous Age followed by 22 more over the next six years. It was a reformist’s bible, an indictment of a great country in decay and a programme on how to save it: a constitutional monarchy; a new exam‑ination and education system; a dense network of roads, railways and telegraph; and the study of Western science, medicine and electronics. It also analysed the close relation between a nation’s military strength and its commercial prowess. The book became an instant best seller.Emperor Guangxu liked it so much that he ordered 2,000 copies to be distributed to his ministers and other high officials. It helped inspire him to embark on a sweeping programme of reforms – including many of those advocated in the book – in June 1898.Zheng’s book captured the spirit of his time and represented the feelings of thousands of intellectuals alike. Together, they witnessed the humiliation of what had once been the world’s most powerful country caused by nations that were a fraction of its size and thousands of kilo‑metres away. The book went through more than 20 editions and sold more copies than any other title during that period. Its readers included Kang You ‑wei and Liang Qi ‑chao, two of the leaders of the 1898 reform, who managed to escape execution by fleeing to Japan.Among the readers was Sun Yat ‑sen, leader of the revolutionary forces who finally overthrew the Qing dynasty in 1911. Sun adopt‑ed many of Zheng’s ideas in his plans for a modern Chinese republic. Another fan was Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China. “I very much liked this book,” Mao wrote in 1936. “The au‑thor was an old reformist who believed that the weakness of China was due to the fact that it did not have the instruments of the West – rail‑ways, telephones, telegraph and steamships.” After Mao took power, he

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city10followed Zheng’s advice by making rapid industrialisation of China one of his priorities.The house in Macao offered Zheng a safe haven for reflection and writing, in the middle of a public life full of challenges and setbacks. It was built in 1869 by his father Zheng Wen ‑rui, a scholar, intellectual, and collector of old books. with financial help from his son. Zheng’s family came from Xiangshan (now known as Zhongshan) municipality, the county over the border in the mainland from Macao. The Portuguese colony was the favoured destination of the rich and the intellectual elite of Zhongshan. As the most modern city in the region, it offered a level of comfort and exposure to the outside world that could not be found at home. In addition, as a Portuguese enclave, it offered sanctuary to those who had fallen foul of the Imperial government – an increasingly large number in the last decades of its rule. The house was one of the largest private residences in Macao at that time, with a complex of courtyards extending more than 120 metres along the street. The Zheng family lived in two enclosed courtyards, two ‑ and three‑‑storeys high; there were also gardens and one ‑storey quarters for serv‑ants. Zheng Guan ‑ying and a younger brother extended the home after they moved in. There are no other family homes in Macao of this size and character.Born into an intellectual familyZheng was born on 24 July 1842 in Yongmo township of Sanxiang in Xiangshan, into an intellectual family. His father, Zheng Wen ‑rui, nev‑er passed the civil service exam and worked for a long time as a teacher in the township. In all of China, this county on the border of Macao was the most open to the outside world. During the late Qing and early Republican period, it produced many distinguished industrialists, entre‑preneurs, writers and diplomats; Zheng Guan ‑ying being one of them. He spent his early years in his hometown and when he was seven or eight, he moved to Macao.Following the Opium War, the ports of Shanghai and Guangzhou became open for foreign commerce. Fortunes were made by those who

Chapter 1: Zheng Guan-ying11could become part of a new business – importing foreign products and exporting Chinese ones. One of Zheng’s uncles and cousins had gone to Shanghai to work in this field as compradors for foreign companies. His father decided that the young man would have a better future in business than pursuing the traditional studies of a scholar. Thus, in 1858, when Guan ‑ying was only 16 and had not complet‑ed his studies, his father sent him to Shanghai to live with his uncle and work alongside him in a foreign trading company. It was an invaluable experience. The young man sat in the office of his uncle, listening and learning and beginning his study of English. In 1859, thanks to the intro‑duction of a relative, he went to work in Butterfield & Swire, one of the biggest British trading firms at that time. That winter he made his first business trip to the northern port of Tianjin. To improve his English, he enrolled for evening classes at the Anglo‑‑Chinese School, established by a British missionary. For his new firm, he established branches in Jiangxi province and Fuzhou (in Fujian province) and invested in a new joint venture shipping company. He developed an interest in understanding Western politics and economics.Butterfield & Swire, the Far Eastern trading company of John Swire and Sons (JS & S), was one of three companies established from the part‑nership of John and William Swire with R.S. Butterfield. The Shanghai Office opened on 1 January 1867 to handle JS & S textile shipments to China which had previously been consigned to Preston, Bruell & Co. Almost at once, the firm’s interests were extended with the acquisition of the agency for Alfred Holt’s Blue Funnel Line; expansion into shipping, insurance, and other fields was eventually to lead to the abandonment of textile shipments for which the company had originally been formed. Throughout the 19th century, branches were opened and agencies established in ports in Japan, along the Yangtze River, and down the China coast; including the Hong Kong office which was accorded equal status with Shanghai in 1870. Expansion also took place into Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Philippines until there were B & S offices or agents in most parts of the Far East. Although the partnership with Butterfield was dissolved in 1868, the firm retained its original title; new partners were taken in by John Swire, particularly after his brother’s retirement in 1876.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city12Founding China Merchants In 1868, Zheng went into the tea business on his own account and became a partner in the Gongzheng Shipping Company (United Steam Navigation Company). In 1872, he became the general man‑ager of Yangzhou Baoji Salt Company in Jiangsu province. The next year he became one of the founding shareholders of Swire Shipping and a shareholder in China Merchants Shipping (CMS), which was es‑tablished by the Qing government to challenge the foreign firms that dominated China’s import and export business. The firm is alive and thriving today with its headquarters in Hong Kong. It has grown into an international conglomerate.In 1874, Zheng accepted the post of general manager of Swire Shipping. He set up branches and financial offices of the firm in ports on the Yangtze river and its business boomed. In addition, he diversified his personal investments, putting mon‑ey into the Kaiping coal mine in Hebei province, the Shanghai Paper company and the Shanghai Machinery and Textile Bureau. From being a comprador, he had become a capitalist. He had a close relationship with Li Hong ‑zhang and other leaders of China’s Self ‑Strengthening Movement. Li was a senior official of the Qing government and one of the leading advocates of modernisation. He and like ‑minded individu‑als wanted to build up the country’s industrial, technical, and military strength, to enable China to compete on an equal playing field with the foreign colonial powers.There were few men in China with Zheng’s curriculum vitae. He had worked at a high level in one of the foreign trading firms that con‑trolled the import and export business of China. He saw its management methods, accounting, and control of personnel and money. His own country had few, if any, such companies. CMS was established as a model, using Western methods and man‑agements. It needed people like Zheng to run it; officials from the govern‑ment did not have the necessary knowledge or experience. Zheng’s career had given him a wide range of contacts in the worlds of officialdom and business, making him extremely wealthy. He had a large family with several wives and concubines.

Chapter 1: Zheng Guan-ying13Many of his fellow reformers had been educated in schools and universities established by foreigners and foreign missionaries or had studied and worked in Western countries. Zheng never travelled to the West. His knowledge and insights came from his professional career in Shanghai and his first ‑hand experience of its business culture, a mixture of the West and China unique in the country at that time. Other influ‑ences in his life were the culture of his hometown in Xiangshan and Daoism, of which he was a staunch believer and practitioner.In 1880, Emperor Guangxu appointed Zheng to manage both the Shanghai Machinery and Weaving Bureau and the Shanghai Telegraph Bureau. The same year, Zheng completed On Change. It was a compilation of 36 essays covering his ideas on political and so‑cial reform and his advocacy of market competition; he used the term shang zhan (商戰), which literally means “trade war”. He published an abridged version in 1882. He aimed to reach decision ‑makers at the highest level of the government, including the Qing court and its senior bureaucrats. The essays advocated the study of Western learning and methods and the translation into Chinese of Western books on science, technol‑ogy. industry and the military. They also proposed: the introduction of machine production; the development of industry and commerce; and encouraging private business to invest in industry, including mining, shipbuilding and railways. Zheng expressed anger at a tax system that unfairly favoured for‑eign companies in China against domestic firms. He also proposed po‑litical reform and a constitutional system of government. Like many reformers, he saw Britain and Japan as models, countries which had combined monarchy with representative government.In 1882, he left the Swire company after working with them for more than 20 years. He turned his energy to CMS. In the face of fierce competition from foreign shipping companies assisted by a tax system that favoured them, CMS was not doing well. Zheng drew up a list of 16 proposals to improve it and he submitted the list to Li Hong ‑zhang. The proposals included a more rational system of hiring people, rewards and penalties for good and bad performance and measures to cut costs. Li ac‑cepted the plan and Zheng implemented it. He also signed an agreement

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city14with CMS’s two major rivals – Swire and Jardine’s – to control prices. CMS’s business performance and profits improved. In 1883, Li promoted him to chief executive of CMS.During the Sino ‑French war (1884 ‑85), Zheng was sent by the government to Hanoi, Saigon, Phnom Penh and Thailand to collect intelligence and encourage local people to oppose the French.  When the French attacked Taiwan, he went to Hong Kong and chartered a ship to carry troops, grain and ammunition to Taiwan. The war was about whether China or France would control North Vietnam. Zheng’s book Travels to the South is a memoir of this journey. He wrote another book Diaries of Seafaring about tours of Southeast Asia and southern China.Within the traditional Confucian system, officials looked down on merchants, however wealthy, as being people driven only by profit and of low moral standing. To improve his status and gain a larger audience for his ideas, Zheng had therefore to obtain an official rank. Initially, he did this, like other wealthy merchants, by buying official titles. But later the government awarded him titles because of his contributions to disaster relief and to public services. Financial problemsIn 1885, financial problems occurred in his companies. A debtor who owed a large sum of money fled and Zheng went to Hong Kong to deal with the problem. He was detained and it took a year to settle the issue. Another of his companies went into debt. Zheng was exhausted by these difficulties and his family urged him to retire from public life. He took their advice and moved to Macao. In a letter of explanation to a senior official of the Qing govern‑ment, he wrote: “In recent years, my life has been very hard to bear, with so many things to do and many not working out as I had wished. I was criticised by my superiors and friends for things that happened outside my control, and members of my family became angry with me. They urge me to leave public life. My appeals to higher authority have been unsuccessful.”

Chapter 1: Zheng Guan-ying15Entrepreneur turns political activistSo Zheng returned to the Mandarin’s House in Macao and devoted most of his time to writing. He developed and enriched the ideas ex‑pressed in On Change. Away from the intense pressure of daily manage‑ment and political infighting, he was able to concentrate on his writing and put down his thoughts in a systematic manner. The new book covered politics, economics, diplomacy, culture and military affairs and reflected what he had learnt during more than three decades in government and business. In 1894, he published the first five chapters of what became his most famous book – Words of Warning in a Prosperous Age. He changed the title from On Change to give it a sense of greater urgency. The title was full of irony. The 1890s was not at all an era of pros‑perity for the Qing empire. In 1894, China embarked on a war with Japan that resulted in humiliating defeat and the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, under which it ceded Taiwan, the Pescadores and parts of Liaoning province. The defeat angered the public and caused many to petition and protest against the Qing government and its treatment at the hands of the foreign imperialists. The defeat by Japan, a country with a fraction of China’s resources and population, was the most vivid proof of the country’s decline and the need for sweeping reform.Zheng’s book summarised his experiences as a businessman and as an observer of a declining dynasty confronted by aggressive foreign pow‑ers equipped with advanced weapons, technology and political systems. The book advocates: the development of economy and industry to make the country stronger; a reform of politics; the establishment of constitu‑tional government; a modern educational system; and the promotion of ethics. He proposed that China should host a World Expo, suggesting Shanghai as the most suitable venue. This finally came to pass in 2010, more than a century later. In 1895, Zheng published a 14 ‑chapter version of his masterpiece and, in 1900, a revised eight ‑chapter one.Zheng achieved his objective of being read by the most powerful people in the land. Deng Hua ‑xi, the governor of Jiangsu and himself a reformer, recommended the book strongly to Emperor Guangxu. As a result, he read it in 1895 and was greatly impressed. He liked it so much

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city16that he ordered 2,000 copies to be distributed to his ministers and other high officials. It helped to inspire him to embark on a sweeping pro‑gramme of reforms – including many of those advocated in the book – in June 1898. This proved to be the last attempt by the Qing government to re‑form itself. Conservatives, led by the Empress Dowager Cixi Taihou, op‑posed the reforms. On September 11 1898, the Empress Dowager organ‑ised a coup d’etat, forced Emperor Guangxu into seclusion and executed six of the chief advocates of reform. It became known as the Hundred Days’ Reform.Despite this setback, Zheng continued to hold important positions in China, including in railway and shipping companies. In 1902, after a warlord seized control of the Shanghai shipping and telegraph companies with which he was involved, Zheng moved back to live in his hometown and Macao. He divided his time between Guangdong and Shanghai, working as a businessman and writer.Like most Chinese, he rejoiced in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911. But he was very disappointed that the revolution led to warlords taking power in many provinces of China. So, he devoted his final years to education. He was chairman of a public school founded by China Merchant Steamship (CMS) in Shanghai and honorary director of the Shanghai Commercial Middle School. In April 1921, he retired as chair‑man of the CMS school and died in May 1922 in the apartments of the school in Shanghai. A year later, his coffin was taken to Macao for burial. He left behind written works totalling 1.5 million charactersChanging fortunes of Mandarin’s HouseWith six wives and concubines, Zheng left a large family. Few re‑mained in Macao, most of them moving to other parts of China and abroad. For years, the family house was rented out as cheap accommo‑dation for dozens of families, despite an infrastructure completely unable to cope with so many people. It had no modern toilets. Each morning a man arrived with a cart to remove the human waste. The supply of running water was also grossly inadequate. And the families had to use communal kitchens.

Chapter 1: Zheng Guan-ying17The number of residents peaked during World War II, when Macao’s population tripled to 450,000, because of refugees fleeing from the mainland and Hong Kong. By the 1990s, the government be‑gan to consider the issue of restoring the house. In 1992, it was listed as a “Building of Architectural Interest” under the Heritage Law. At the same time, a local developer had his eyes on the site. He signed agree‑ments with many of the residents to purchase their units and gave them compensation to move elsewhere. His aim was to acquire the whole of the site and redevelop it. During this process, many valuable items were stolen from the house. From 1991, the Portuguese administration began to negotiate the purchase of the house from the developer, but without success.“After I joined the Cultural Affairs Bureau (CAB) in 1996, I came here several times and saw what the conditions were,” said Jacob Cheong Cheok Kio, the architect who was head of the Department of Cultural Heritage at the CAB during the restoration work. “They were very bad. Some rooms had no roof after they had been damaged by fire. Water was leaking and the plaster had fallen off the walls. At first, there had been no toilets though some were added later. It was not habitable.” In 2001, the government took the decision to purchase the building from the developer in exchange for a plot of land in Nam Van, a prime area close to the waterfront. In 2005, the Mandarin’s House, an integral part of the “Historic Centre of Macao” was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The government began the restoration work in 2001 and expected to complete it by 2007 but it took two years longer.The house was open to the public in February 2010 after eight years of painstaking restoration work costing 45 million patacas. “It is the biggest well ‑preserved ancestral mansion in the Lingnan (south China) style in the urban areas of Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Macao,” said Stephen Chan Chak Seng, acting deputy director of the CAB, in announcing the opening. It is one of the architectural treasures of the city, combining traditional Chinese design and Western elements – the mixture of cultures that defines Macao. It boasts two adjoining court‑yard homes, elaborately carved doors, a walled garden, Tuscan col‑umns, false ceilings, large windows and elaborate frescoes adorning the interior walls.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city18“Eight years is not a long time at all (to complete the renovation),” said Chan. “Similar renovation work in other places might take two or three times that length of time to complete.”When the CAB started the work, more than 300 people were living there; 80 per cent of the structure had been damaged after the family moved out in the 1960s and decided to rent the space. It was an eight‑‑year labour of love, during which architects and craftsmen worked me‑ticulously to bring the building back to its former glory. “We worked step by step, like archaeologists,” said Cheong . “We did not know the original design or have any records or archives to work from. We could not rebuild it as a new house. We had to conserve the old one, in a spirit of authenticity and integrity, using the standards of the time.”Painstaking restorationThe restoration was a work of love and patience. Cheong and his team did not know the original construction materials other than those they recovered on site. Also, there were not many specialists in the field whom they could approach for help. So, they invited Cheng Jianjun, a professor at the South China University of Technology (based in Guangzhou), a specialist in Chinese compound houses of the same period in Guangdong, to conduct a study of the house.“We also drew on our experience of restoring other homes as well as consulting elderly residents who recalled memories of the house,” said Cheong. So, the project was like puzzle work and was as much archaeol‑ogy as architecture.The team started without an overall plan and worked room by room, building up their understanding as they went along. This meant a slow pace of work. The men had to remove the layers of plaster very carefully, using small knifes, for fear of damaging traces of the original construction below, as marks left were important clues for putting to‑gether the full picture of what the original house looked like. This kind of forensic ‑like procedure helped the team to recover the original staircases and wall structures.

Chapter 1: Zheng Guan-ying19In some places, like the altar at the front door, they found 18 layers of plaster and paint. This shows the respect the owner had for tradition, through repetitive restoration work. The result was that restoring one room could take up to six months.In one large reception room, they removed a wooden wall which had been added by a tenant to find a fresco – of a story expressing the importance of filial piety – that had been painted on the plaster below. In removing the nails which connected the wood, they had to use cotton, so as not to dislodge the entire fresco. Restoring it took six months.They could not use ordinary construction workers for the Mandarin’s House project, but only those skilled and experienced in this kind of work, found in villages and cities in Guangdong. Up to 30 worked at the same time. “The biggest challenges were the overall structure and the details,” said Cheong. “Many things had been lost and the damage was very serious.”Opening to the publicThey finished the restoration in 2009. With more than 60 rooms and a total area of 4,000 square metres, it is the largest private house in Macao and has become a popular tourist attraction. February 6, 2010 was a proud day for Cheong and his staff. Chief Executive Fernando Chui Sai On came in person to officially open the door of the restored building to the public. While no member of the Zheng family was among the invited guests, the first person in the long queue waiting to enter was a descendant, a man in his 50s who lives nearby. The staff gave him a gift.“Entry is free, because we want to give people the opportunity to see this local cultural treasure,” said Cheong. “It is an educational pro‑cess. We have 10,000 visitors a month.”Initially, the majority were Macao people. Later there was an increas‑ing number of Hong Kong residents, accounting for up to half the visitors, as well as people from the mainland, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. Zheng Guan ‑ying is well known in the Chinese world, at home and abroad; the fact that he wrote his most famous book in the house is the biggest attraction. The Macao pavilion at the Shanghai Expo in 2010 explained that Zheng had been the first person to propose holding the event in the city more than a century earlier.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city20Authentic experienceWhat visitors find is a restored building that is remarkably faith‑ful to the original. The team have installed electric lighting, which is new. There are only two air ‑conditioners, one in the security room with surveillance equipment that must be kept cool and the other in the sou‑venir shop.“Last summer a man wrote in the visitors’ book that he felt too hot during his visit and wanted air ‑conditioning. We, however, felt that mod‑ern facilities could affect the aesthetics too much, even if they were the most discreet they could be. The high ceilings and the control of natural airflow were once an architectural solution to hot weather conditions, and were adequate at the time. We hope people would be able to contin‑ue to understand this and appreciate the wisdom of Chinese architecture.“The authentic experience of the heritage is put together by our sens‑es, not just through what we see, but also how we feel inside,” said Cheong.They built a new reception room and installed toilets at the back, separate from the old building. Both are clearly detached from the orig‑inal structure. “We used original materials as much as possible. We did not use fakes. We worked in a spirit of harmony,” added Cheong.The window shutters are a good example. The originals that were still able to be used were retained, but where they had decayed beyond repair, the craftsmen put in replacements of a similar design. The entrance to the main building is round. Former residents told Cheong’s team that this entrance, where visitors would alight from pal‑anquins (covered sedan chairs), was shaped “like a hole”. Workers found discarded curved stonework in the garden and reasoned that this formed the original framework for the circular moon gate.The house contains a display room which chronicles the restoration process and the methods used. The visitors should be grateful to Cheong and his team. Their eight years of effort have produced a remarkable reconstruction of a large and elegant 19th ‑century home, which has be‑come one of the treasures of Macao.To ensure that the building remains in good condition, those man‑aging it will allow a maximum of 100 people inside at any time, with a maximum of 60 inside the main section.

Chapter 1: Zheng Guan-ying21The CAB launched a website (www.wh.mo/mandarinhouse/en) to let people know about the historic site before they visit. The next step will be a museum nearby, to display Zheng’s historic documents, which will be completed in 2011.Cheong said that the Macao Museum had many documents on the life of Zheng but that the Mandarin’s House did not have the conditions suitable to display them. “So, the museum will be a modern building, three storeys tall, with the equipment and temperature controls needed to show the documents and other materials on Zheng’s life.” The land belongs to the government; the CAB is paying the cost of the building, designed by a firm of local architects. “It will be a different style to the Mandarin’s House but will be in harmony with it. It will be free and open both to the scholars and the general public,” said Cheong.In February 2018 the CAB issued the following update on the muse‑um: “The Mandarin’s House, as a part of the Historic Centre of Macao, will house the ‘Zheng Guan ‑ying Memorial Museum’, aiming to show‑case to the public the documents, household items and daily accessories, among other historical relics and replicas that belong to Zheng Guan‑‑ying and the Mandarin’s House: and introducing the historical biogra‑phy of Zheng and his role in the development of national enterprises in modern China: as well as illustrating the history of the Zheng family and their contributions to charities. “It is also dedicated to compiling, collating, collecting and studying Zheng Guan ‑ying’s files and documents, hoping to promote more aca‑demic achievements and exchanges between aspiring professionals in the study of Zheng Guan ‑ying, of the history of the development of Chinese national enterprises and the Self ‑Strengthening Movement, among other topics of Chinese modern history.“As a historical building, the Mandarin’s House does not meet the requirements of a memorial museum for the protection of cultural relics, while maintaining the main premises without any alteration. Therefore, the ‘Zheng Guan ‑ying Memorial Museum’ will be set up in a section comprising Nos. 61 ‑63 of Rua da Praia do Manduco and the ruins of a demolished house on the northern side of the Mandarin’s House. The Memorial Museum is currently under development and has not yet opened to the public.”

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city22SourcesArchives of London School of Oriental and African Studies; Baidu bi‑ography of Zheng Guan ‑ying; Interviews with Stephen Chan Chak Seng and Jacob Cheong Cheok Kio, officials of the Macao Cultural Affairs Bureau (CAB); Mandarin’s House material (of CAB); Southern Metropolitan Daily newspaper (Guangzhou)

Lou KauChapter 2

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city24

Chapter 2: Lou Kau25Macao’s first gambling king and major philanthropistLou Kau was one of the wealthiest Chinese merchants of Macao in the second half of the 19th century. Born into a prominent family in Xinhui, Guangdong province, he moved to Macao at the age of 14. His first job was in a shop that exchanged currency. Lou prospered and opened his own banking house and opium business, becoming the first man in the city to be awarded a gambling franchise. He also invested in property and the pork business, amassing great wealth. Effectively a representative of the Chinese business com‑munity and the Chinese population as a whole in Macao, Lou act‑ed as a bridge between them and the colonial government. In 1888, he became a Portuguese citizen and received two awards from the Portuguese government. Lou was a generous philanthropist and one of the founders of the Tong Sin Tong, the most important charity in the city, that was set up in 1892. He was a director of the Kiang Wu hospital, the first modern hospital for the Chinese population. He also gave money for emergen‑cy relief and built schools in Macao and his native village.In 1889, he built a spacious mansion in the centre of the city that has become a popular tourist attraction. Down a narrow street in downtown is the Lou Ka Mansion, an elegant two ‑storey man‑sion with spacious reception rooms, high ceilings and stained glass ‑ evidently the home of a man of wealth and importance. It has been designated a UNESCO heritage site, Visitors go to see its blend of Chinese and Western architecture and attend artistic performances, such as puppet shows, musical recitals, and calligraphy exhibitions. They can enjoy the art of the present in a setting that takes them back to the past.But Lou’s story had a tragic ending. In 1897, he and a group of associates paid an enormous sum for the right to an eight ‑year gam‑bling licence in Guangdong. Just three years later, a new governor of the province banned gambling and refused to repay Lou for the lost years. Suddenly, he had huge debts, which he could not repay. He had made a large bet – and failed. On 11 November 1906, he hanged himself on a beam in his spacious mansion at the age of 59. He was

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city26buried in a cemetery in Guangzhou, next to his first wife. In 1960, when the government took over the land of the cemetery, his body was exhumed and he was reburied next to other members of his fam‑ily in a church cemetery in Macao.Early life Lou Kau was born the third of four sons into a prominent family in a county within Xinhui, Guangdong province in 1848. His birth name was Lou Wa Sio but his nickname was Lou Kau, because his friends thought he had an aggressive and pugnacious nature and resembled a dog (“kau” is dog in Cantonese). Kau also means “nine”; this was the character used to write his name. The Lou’s were one of the four most prominent families in the county, having moved there during the time of Emperor Du Zong in the Southern Sung dynasty (1265 ‑1274). Lou had two elder brothers both of whom died when they were young. Xinhui was a prosperous area, thanks to being part of the Pearl River Delta and its proximity to Macao and Hong Kong. In 1862, he moved to Macao in search of better work opportunities and to improve his station in life.It was a pivotal moment in the former colony’s history. After their victory over China in the First Opium War (1839 ‑42), the British had estab‑lished a deep ‑water harbour in Hong Kong, just 50 kilometres away. Macao had lost its monopoly as the sole port for China’s foreign trade and could not compete with the deeper harbour and better facilities of Hong Kong. Seeking an alternative source of income to replace its losses from trading, the colonial government made gambling legal in 1847. Another important business was the export of Chinese labour to Central and South America. The young Lou, a short, stocky man with a large head, was an able and ambitious businessman, eager to seize any opportunity. His first job was in a currency exchange shop where he worked hard and saved his earnings. With his savings, he opened the Bou Hong banking house, ran it well and saw it turn a good profit. He also went into the meat business, buying pigs in Guangdong and selling their meat in Macao. But he saw that finance and meat were not the sectors that yielded the highest profit – these were opium and gambling.

Chapter 2: Lou Kau27In 1882, he obtained a gambling licence from the colonial govern‑ment. He started operations in the house of a rich man, converting it into a casino offering the game Fan Tan, one of the most popular Chinese forms of gambling. Next was a game called The White Pigeon (Pigeon Lottery), so named because the birds were used to send messages contain‑ing the names of the winners across China. According to legend, the game began in the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) when the ruler of a besieged city had to find a way to raise money to support his army without raising taxes. The ruler took 120 characters from a popular poem and made subdivisions of eight. Punters had to guess the eight characters. It was a lottery played with characters rather than numbers. The game became popular across China and is still played in Macao today, in a modernised format, in a crowded shop opposite the Lisboa Hotel. In 1882, Lou also bought a licence to sell opium. Under the contract he signed with the government, he had the right to sell opium and operate Fan Tan houses in Taipa for one year from 1 May 1882. Anyone else who did would be subject to heavy fines and confiscation of his opium, the contract said. These two brought him his first fortune. His business op‑erations extended outside Macao and into Guangdong province. Official records show that, in 1882 and 1883, Lou paid the Macao government 8,800 silver dollars for the monopoly to sell opium and operate Fan Tan casinos in Taipa, an island that is one of the three districts of Macao. In 1885, the price had risen to 9,320 dollars. In 1885 ‑86, he paid 130,000 dollars for the right to run Fan Tan casinos in the peninsula of Macao, then, as now, the richest and most densely populated part of the city. From 1886 to 1895, he paid 145,000 dollars a year to continue the Fan Tan operations. In May 1888, he became a Portuguese citizen.Lou Kau MansionLou built his mansion in 1889. It is a two ‑storey house with similar architectural characteristics to that of a typical Xiguan house. Xiguan was a style of house in Lingnan (South China), used as a traditional family res‑idence. These houses were first built in Guangzhou by rich families and merchants in the late Qing dynasty and subsequently copied in other areas.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city28The Mansion was one of the first large houses in Macao built in an entirely Chinese style. It has a symmetrical arrangement, organised in a three ‑by ‑three grid. The two courtyards in the central axis separate the three main halls on the ground floor – the Entrance Hall, the Sedan Hall, and the Senior Hall. This layout embodies the hierarchical structure of traditional Confucian Chinese families. On the second floor is a Worship Hall and bedrooms. The Entrance Hall was named after the worship of the door ‑god. When high officials and other VIPs visited the house, they would ride straight in on their sedan chairs via the entrance hall. The chairs would be parked in the next section of the hall way, which became known as the Sedan Hall. The Senior Hall, with a high ceiling, was the place where Lou received important guests; it was the most important room in the house. He had a study which looked out on a small courtyard. This cre‑ated an elegant and comfortable atmosphere. In the Worship Hall, Lou placed the ancestral tablets of his family and its gods; this was the most hallowed room in the house. Located on the second floor was the master bedroom where he placed a beautiful Chinese ‑style decorative bas ‑relief.The interior design contains many elegant features: the external wall laid with grey bath bricks; the oyster shell and Manzhou windows; the auspicious brick relief and sculpture; gold ‑coin ‑shaped holes in the small courtyards, the floors, and other places. These are all signs of a rich and powerful family. The oyster shells were made from shells collected in the shallows along the coast around Macao; they are translucent and durable. The window designs combine Western ‑style blinds and oyster shells with colourful glass windows and Chinese plaster moulding – a fusion of Chinese and Western styles. On the bricks are carved patterns such as the Chinese characters Fu, Lu and Shou, meaning “good fortune”, “prosperity” and “longevity”. They are hand ‑carved in gold lacquer on grey bricks and feature carved flowers, birds, coins, and other items. They are exquisitely finished. On one wall is a red ‑crowned crane, which represents longevity and good health for the Lou family. On another wall is a vase, which is a sym‑bol of peace. Inside are peonies, symbols of wealth. Although the house is in the middle of a downtown area, it was built to provide maximum privacy to the family. It is also well lit and ventilated.

Chapter 2: Lou Kau29Giving back to societyBy now a wealthy man, Lou became active in many sectors of socie‑ty. His success had made Lou a prominent person. He earned the respect of the colonial government, which regarded him as a representative of the Chinese population.In April 1891, Nicholas Alexandrovich, the son of the Tsar of Russia, was due to visit Macao. The government set up a committee to welcome him. Lou was appointed as the head of the Chinese delegation for the event; he began to organise a welcoming ceremony. The Tsar de‑cided that such a journey was necessary to educate the young man who would succeed him as Emperor of all Russia. He set out on 23 October 1890, going to Vienna and then Trieste. He went to Thailand, Singapore, and Nanjing in China; from there, he went to Japan, where he was the target of a failed assassination attempt. It was a marathon journey but in the end, Nicholas never travelled to Macao. Nevertheless, Lou’s appoint‑ment was a sign of the high status he held with the colonial authorities.Lou became increasingly involved in public affairs, especially in charities that aimed to help the city’s local population. With 45 other Chinese businessmen, he applied to the government to establish Tong Sin Tong, a charity to serve the local people. The government announced its approval of the project in January 1893. This was a landmark in the city’s history. Since then, it has been one of its most important charities; serving the poor, the needy, and refugees with food, medicine, education, and other forms of help; con‑tinuing to raise funds from businessmen such as Lou. He also donated generously to the Kiang Wu Hospital, the first such institution estab‑lished to cater to the colony’s Chinese population. He and his eldest son, Lou Lim Ieoc, both served as its president. He donated money for schools and rice to the poor.Lou founded a relief committee to help victims of disasters in north‑ern China. In April 1895, a plague swept through Macao. The communi‑ty set up a large tent in Taipa for the victims and Lou Kau was the most generous donor. In the winter of 1898, a serious fire swept through a residential area of the city causing many deaths and burning down the homes of many residents. Many civic organisations stepped forward to

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city30help, including Lou who donated 3,000 taels to build 100 tents for the homeless. Later, he gave money to build new homes, which he sold to the residents for one third of their market value. He built schools in his native village and in Macao, including one for the children of fishing people – the only one of its kind in Guangdong province. In 1890 and 1894, Lou received awards from the King of Portugal for his contributions to Macao society and, in 1898, an award from the Chinese emperor. Like other rich Chinese of his time, he took several wives. Historical accounts give different numbers; the largest is 10 wives, with 17 sons and 16 daughters. He had more than a dozen properties where the wives lived. One lived in the Mansion that visitors can visit today. His wives and their staff in the different homes did not know when he would come but had to be prepared for his arrival at any moment. At the end of the 19th century, Lou was at his zenith – the richest man in Macao, with a large family, highly respected in society, and with the ear of the colony’s governor. When he left his home in Xinhui 40 years before, he could not have imagined such good fortune. Turn of fate due to new measures by the Chinese authorities in Guangdong However, events in his native Guangdong would turn this happiness into tragedy. Gambling in the mainland was different to that in Macao. The colonial government regarded it, along with opium, as one of its main sources of revenue and protected the operators. It was little con‑cerned with the negative impact on the Chinese who accounted for the vast majority of the customers of both. The government of Guangdong, and other provinces in China, took a more ambiguous view. They knew that gambling was endemic to Chinese and, whether legal or not, people would gamble. If it was legal, the state gained revenue, which it badly needed – to equip its military to repel foreign invaders. But the officials also knew gambling was a curse that turned wife against husband and children against their parents, de‑stroyed families and drove businesses into financial ruin. They saw its devastating effect on the fabric of society. 

Chapter 2: Lou Kau31In 1897, the Guangdong government invited operators to bid for a monopoly gambling franchise. For Lou, this was a far larger market than Macao; the province then had a population of over 30 million, against about 75,000 in the colony. He put together a company named Hong Feng, with nine investors from Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macao and registered capital of 720,000 taels of gold. It made a bid of one million silver dollars and, on 18 May that year, won the franchise for eight years. The government required the operator to pay the franchise fee for the full period, which amounted to three million dollars. This was an enormous sum at that time, but Lou and his partners believed it better to pay up front; future governors would then not be able to raise the annual fee arbitrarily. Things did not go well for Hong Feng. The government did not move against illegal operators who continued their casinos and paid no fee to the authorities. So, Hong Feng did not enjoy a real monopoly. The illegal operators took away some of its business. More bad luck with the gaming ban by Guangdong and Guangxi Worse followed in 1900, when Li Hong ‑zhang, one of the high‑est officials of the Qing government, came to Guangzhou and said that the franchise period of eight years was too long. This gave the cue to Cen Chunxuan, Viceroy of Guangdong and Guangxi, and a bitter op‑ponent of gambling. He said that social chaos threatened the province and gambling was the principal cause. Supported by other officials, Cen announced a ban – and refused to return the fee paid by Hong Feng. Worse, he increased the total Lou had to pay to 4.75 million silver dol‑lars, including interest and missed payments. Facing financial ruin, Lou appealed to the Portuguese government for help, on the grounds that he was one of their citizens who deserved help in recognition of all he had done for their colony. Negotiations continued during the summer of 1904. At a meeting in September, Cen stunned his Portuguese counterpart by showing him doc‑uments dating from 1898 – 10 years after Lou had taken Portuguese citi‑zenship – that showed he had given it up and returned to being a Chinese. “According to our law, Lou could not be a Portuguese again. He can only

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city32have one nationality,” Cen announced triumphantly. “This has nothing to do with you. This is an internal Chinese affair.” The Portuguese side could do nothing to help. Cen had another grudge against Lou; he had helped a corrupt of‑ficial to flee to Macao. Under strong pressure from Beijing, the colonial government handed him back on 23 June 1904. Therefore, for the main‑land government, Lou had two black marks against him. This made it harder for him to find help and support. He now had debts greater than his considerable assets. With no help from the colonial government, he sought loans from foreign and Chinese merchants in Hong Kong and Macao. But how was he going to repay them? In despair at the debts and the fierce hostility of Cen and his sup‑porters, he saw no way out. On 11 November 1906, he threw a rope over a beam in his principal home – the Mansion – and took his own life. He was 59. In Chinese tradition, if a person commits suicide, his action wipes out debts which he owes; his creditors must not pursue the debt and must leave his family alone. He was buried in a cemetery in Guangzhou next to his first wife. In 1960, the city government took over the land; his remains were exhumed and returned to Macao, where they were re ‑buried in a family grave in the cemetery of Sao Miguel Arcanjo.Son takes over It fell to his eldest son, Lou Lim Ieoc, then 28, to take over the fam‑ily business. He followed in his father’s footsteps, running the gambling operations in Macao and branching into a theatre, silver, pharmaceuti‑cals, and pawn ‑broking. (See Chapter 7 on Lou Lim Ieoc)Lou Lim Ieoc died on 17 June 1927. Three years later, the gambling franchise of the Lou family expired and was put up for public tender. Another company obtained it for the next six years; then a third firm won the franchise in 1937 and made its fortune during World War II, when Macao became a haven for the rich from Hong Kong and mainland China. Since Portugal was neutral in the war, Macao was the only major city in southern China not occupied by the Japanese military. The loss of franchise brought the decline of the Lou family. It had to sell some houses and rent out others, including the Mansion. It was often

Chapter 2: Lou Kau33rented out to several tenants at a time and eventually as many as 20 fam‑ilies. Lack of maintenance took its toll, until the ownership was trans‑ferred to the government in the 1960s. It was in bad condition; many al‑terations had been made to the house and some of the rooms demolished. In order to preserve it, the SAR government relocated the tenants and hired specialists to undertake a meticulous restoration. From July 2002, the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the SAR government began resto‑ration work. It opened the Mansion to the public in the middle of 2005. “In 2005, the Historic Centre of Macao was inscribed on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List,” said the official guide to the Mansion. “Lou Kau Mansion is one of the historic sites on the list and features the traditional Chinese architectural style of Lingnan. It shares UNESCO rec‑ognition with other historical sites in Macao, which represent a unique fusion of Chinese and Western cultures.” Following the renovation, the house has served as a venue for many activities – including a theatre stage, exhibition hall for floriculture, and recital hall for Chinese music. It stages arts ‑and ‑crafts performances and workshops by renowned artists from mainland China to show their skill and work as well as allowing tourists and local residents to experience the richness of the cultural relics and artistic activities of Macao.Chinese see this is an example of a popular saying – “fu wu san dai” – which means “wealth does not last longer than three generations” – in other words, the first generation makes a fortune, the second spends it and the third starts again from nothing. Descendants of Lou Kau live on in Macao, with some operating sportswear shops. But they keep a low profile and avoid the media; some are uneasy about their famous ances‑tor, who made his fortune out of two of the biggest vices of Chinese.SourcesLou Kau Mansion official document, Lou Lim Ieoc Garden and the Lou Family, by Zheng De ‑hui and Peng Hai ‑ling, Department of Cultural Activities and Recreation, Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau, SAR government, November 2010; People’s Daily Overseas Edition, 6/7/2006

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city34

Zhan Tian ‑youChapter 3

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city36

Chapter 3: Zhan Tian-you37The father of China’s railwaysZhan Tian ‑you is famous as the “Father of China’s Railways”. He was the chief engineer responsible for the first railway built in China without foreign assistance – from Beijing to Kalgan (now Zhangjiakou) in Hebei province. During a career that spanned 31 years, he designed and built 14 railways across China and set standards for the network that were fol‑lowed all over the nation. He was the first Chinese to be trained as a rail‑way engineer in the United States, at Yale University. He was one of 120 Chinese children to cross the Pacific Ocean to study (and one of only two who graduated) – before the Qing government ordered them all home. Zhan is honoured today by statues, a museum and his former homes, in Guangzhou and Wuhan. In 1885, he married a local lady in Macao. His daughter and grandchildren lived for a long time in the city and the family has preserved many items from his life, including a pre‑cious gift donated to him by the Empress Dowager Cixi Taihou.Early lifeZhan was born on 26 April 1861 in Nanhai county, now part of Guangzhou city, in Guangdong province. His family had migrated from Wuyuan county in Anhui province to Guangzhou in the 1760s in search of business opportunities. They were tea merchants who had fallen on hard times. Zhan received his first education at a private school. He was smart and intelligent, with interest in many subjects, especially machin‑ery; he used clay to make models of machines. There was a time he went against the orders of his parents and took a family clock, dismantled it, and reassembled it again. His father was delighted to see his inquisitive mind and hoped that his son would restore the family’s ailing fortunes.Going to the U.S.In 1872, he was chosen to be one of 120 Chinese children sent to the United States for study. This decision by the Qing government to educate its children in the U.S. was a landmark in Chinese history. It

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city38was the result of years of lobbying by Yung Wing, a native of Xiangshan (now Zhongshan), who had had the good fortune to earn a place at Yale University; he graduated with a degree in English literature in 1854 and was the first Chinese graduate of that famous university. After his return to China early the next year, Yung devoted his life to modernising a native country he found so feudal and backward com‑pared to the place where he had studied. One of the best ways, he argued, would be to give other young Chinese the opportunity he had enjoyed. Educated abroad, they would be able to learn foreign languages, science, technology, and skills that had enabled countries in the West, and later Japan, to advance so quickly. Every day he saw in China the advantages which these advances had given foreign companies and people – in education, medicine, sci‑ence, manufacturing and commerce. In 1863, Yung found a patron in Zeng Guo ‑fan, Viceroy of Jiangsu, Jiangxi and Anhui; he was the general who had played an important role in defeating the Taiping rebellion. Zeng persuaded Yung to give up his lucrative job in the private sec‑tor and join the government. Zeng sent him to New York, where he pur‑chased machinery from a firm in Fitchburg, Massachusetts that became part of a machine shop in the Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai, China’s first weapons factory. Yung also set up a Bureau of Translation, which over the next 10 years translated over 100 works. These included Parson’s Law of Contracts, books on geography and manufacturing, and a book of English law. In 1868, Zeng sent to the government four proposals. One was to send 120 students to the U.S, in four batches of 30; they would be aged from 12 to 14 and would have 15 years to finish their education. The scheme, he said, should be continued indefinitely.In the winter of 1870, the government accepted the proposal and allocated US$1.5 million to implement it. It agreed with Zeng that China was critically short of people trained in modern arts and sciences. As a re‑sult, many important posts in the government, such as the management of China’s forts, warships, military forces and customs, were held by foreigners. The country needed its own trained manpower. The government established a Chinese Educational Commission; it would pay all the fees for study and living costs. In exchange, it set several conditions – on

Chapter 3: Zhan Tian-you39completing their studies, the students must return to China and work for the government; they must not cut their pigtails, not convert to Christianity, nor have love affairs. The government decided to send students between the ages of 12 and 15; they would pass a competitive examination and spend one year in a preparatory school in Shanghai before going abroad. Their parents and guardians had to sign an agreement saying that they had agreed to let them go for 15 years. Yung had great difficulty finding willing parents; they did not want to send their children abroad at such a young age to a remote and un‑known country. Most Chinese had no concept of what the U.S. was; let‑ting them go for 15 years was like abandoning them. No family of rank or wealth would sign up. Most receptive were parents in Guangdong, the only province in China that had had long ‑term contact with the outside world. For many decades, its citizens had travelled to Southeast Asia and North and South America to do business or migrate. They had a better understanding of the benefits of this scheme. Of the 120 students who went to the U.S., 84 were from Guangdong, including 39 from Yung’s home county of Xiangshan. It had sent more migrants overseas than any other county in China.Zhan’s parents belonged to this small group of people willing to send their sons abroad. They were persuaded by a friend from Xiangshan who had moved to Macao to do business; he argued such an educa‑tion would benefit their young son. More than other Chinese, the people of Xiangshan understood the benefits of a Western education, even if it meant separation for so many years. So, the young Tian ‑you first went to Shanghai to enter the prepara‑tory school. Then, aged 11, he set out with the first group of 30 on 11 August 1872. They felt a mixture of fear, loneliness, and excitement. It was the first time they had left China; they had no idea of the strange and distant country to which they were going.Living with an American familyAfter arriving in California, the group took the trans ‑Pacific railway to New England. The young men could speak little English

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city40and could not communicate with those around them. Yung made his headquarters in Hartford, Connecticut. He wisely decided that, as he had done 30 years before, the students would adapt to American life and learn English more quickly if they stayed with local families. He determined that two Chinese should stay together in the same house. A total of 137 offered to accept the young Chinese – doctors, ministers of religion, lawyers, and professors. The hosts treated them as mem‑bers of their own family, eating with them and taking them to church on Sundays. Zhan stayed with a man called Luther Hopkins Northrop and his wife at their home in Henry A. Street, New Haven, Connecticut. Northrop was the principal of the Seaside Institute of West Haven. At the start, it was very difficult for Zhan, as for the other boys. The only English they knew was what they had learnt in the prepara‑tory school in Shanghai. Zhan threw himself into the task, memorising new English words every day and practising them with his classmates at school. Zhan attended the Seaside Institute from 1873 ‑75: then the Hillhouse High School and the Hopkins Grammar School, both in New Haven. In 1878, he graduated top of his class and ranked second in his school; he played on the “Orientals”, the school baseball team.Thanks to his excellent grades, in September 1878, he entered the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University. His major was Civil Engineering, with a specialty in railway construction. In his first year, he received a mathematics prize. In 1881, he received a Bachelor of Philosophy.Zhan made best use of his time in the US. He read widely outside his subject, especially books on democracy and modernisation. He enjoyed sports, especially swimming, ice hockey, tennis, and baseball. Like the other Chinese students, he was required to keep his pigtail. So, when they took part in public competitions, the American spectators were amazed to see the pigtails flying in the wind. Yung was overjoyed at the progress of Tian ‑you and his other charg‑es. “When the young men arrived in New England, the heavy weight of repression and suppression was lifted from their minds, they exulted in their freedom and leapt for joy. No wonder they took to athletic sports with alacrity and delight,” he wrote.

Chapter 3: Zhan Tian-you41Forced returnTian ‑you was fortunate; he was one of only two, out of the 120, to graduate from university. In 1881, the government decided to abort the programme; it ordered all the students to return home, regardless of whether or not they had completed their studies. Nearly all had not. What made the government change its mind were reports by Wu Zi ‑deng, a commissioner it had sent to Hartford to monitor the programme. He found that many students had cut off their pigtails, wore Western clothes and spent little time studying Confucianism and traditional rites; some had even converted to Christianity, expressly forbidden in the con‑tract their parents had signed. He concluded that they were losing their “Chineseness” and becoming Americanised. His superiors accepted his judgement and ordered the recall. The conservatives in the Imperial court had won out over the reformers who supported the programme.This meant that, when Zhan and his fellow students returned to Shanghai, they were not treated as members of a new elite, as their par‑ents had hoped for, but with suspicion. Instead of being sent to work in institutions to use the skills they had learnt, they were sent as translators or officers in the new Imperial Navy. Zhan was sent to the Fuzhou Naval Academy, part of the first modern naval shipyard in China.In July 1882, he earned the fifth rank military grade in his class and was assigned for training as a midshipman on the Yang Wu, the flagship of the Southern Squadron. From October 1884 to July 1888, he was a teacher of foreign languages at the Guangdong Institute of General Studies and the affiliated Guangdong Nautical School. In 1885, the government of Guangdong and Guangxi appointed him to carry out the first Chinese survey of the Guangdong coastline for naval defence purposes. He took part in the Sino ‑French war of 1884 ‑85, much of which was fought at sea. Zhan must have wondered why he had spent so much time and energy on learning railway engineering in the United States.One reason was that, in China, the construction of railways was highly controversial. In 1876, a British businessman had laid the country’s first line, the Wusong railway, on the outskirts of Shanghai. Strongly opposed to the idea, the government bought it at a high price, dismantled it, and shipped the rails to Taiwan. Many at the court, including the Empress Dowager, believed

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city42that the steam engines disturbed the spirits of their ancestors and dragons below the ground and that this would have terrible consequences. In 1881, with government approval, a line of 11 kilometres was built to transport coal from a mine in Tangshan, Hebei province. It was built un‑der the direction of British civil engineer Claude Kinder, to the international standard gauge of 1,435 mm, so that it could be turned into a full railway. But the government ordered that only donkeys, not steam engines, could pull the coal carts; they would not disturb the spirits under the earth. When they did, the foreign employees laughed in scorn and ridicule. They asked: was this how China was going to become a modern state and produce steel and warships? The managers of the mine accepted a proposal from Kinder to build a 100 ‑ton engine, “The Rocket of China”, using scrap metal from the mine. The project had to be completed in complete secrecy. The locomotive began operations on 9 June 1881. It was a historic moment – a Chinese ‑made steam engine was pulling coal on the country’s first standard ‑gauge railway. When the news reached the Imperial Palace, there was uproar. It ordered a ban on the steam engine, saying that its movements and black smoke were disturbing the imperial ancestors in their tombs. But the manager of the coal mine persisted; he would not go back to donkeys. He knew he had the backing of reformists at the court. Finally, the court lifted the ban.With this inauspicious background, it is not surprising then that Zhan had to wait so long to exercise his profession – respected and well ‑paid in the West but still controversial in his own country.On 27 March 1887, he married Tan Ju ‑zhen in Macao; he was 26 and she 19. The wedding had the blessing of both families. It turned out to be a happy marriage, with five sons and three daughters. It was the Tan family who had helped to persuade his parents to send Zhan to the U.S. A railway engineer at lastIt was only in 1888 that Zhan was finally able to realise his dream of becoming an engineer and use the skills he had worked so hard to learn at Yale University. He was hired by the same Claude Kinder, chief engineer on a railway to link the port of Tianjin with the coal mines in Tangshan. A fellow classmate from the US working in Beijing put Zhan

Chapter 3: Zhan Tian-you43in touch with Kinder who employed Zhan in Tianjin as assistant engineer of the Chinese Railway Company, later renamed the Imperial Railways of North China (IRNC). He was soon promoted to engineer and later district engineer. The railway he worked on was later extended to become the Beijing ‑Shenyang line, one of the most important in China. He spent a total of 12 years on this project. One of his achievements was the use of pneumatic caissons underwater in constructing the piers on the Luan River in 1894; it was a first in China. The bridge ran 640 metres, then the longest in China. From 1898 to 1901, Zhan served as resident engineer of IRNC, working on railways in North and Northeast China. From 1901 to 1902, he was engineer of the Pingli railway in Jiangsu province. In 1902, the government decided to build a special line for Empress Dowager Cixi Taihou, so that she could easily visit the tombs of her roy‑al ancestors. Kinder was the original choice to lead the project, but the French objected. So Zhan was given the job of building the line, 37 kilo‑metres long. He succeeded in completing the project in four months, two ahead of schedule, and within budget. Zhan knew that the line had little commercial value but was very important for the future of railways in China. Imperial approval was essential to expand the national network. When she travelled on the line, the Empress Dowager was delighted. She summoned Zhan to a meeting and presented him with a gift of pearls and jewellery. He kept one piece himself and gave the others to his colleagues.Milestone in China’s railwaysIn 1905, the Qing government decided to build a railway to link Beijing with Kalgan, an important trading city 209 km to the north. Because of its strategic importance, the government decided that this would be a Chinese ‑only venture – no foreign engineers, foreign capital, nor debt incurred to foreign creditors. It appointed Zhan as chief engineer. This decision was a big disappointment to Britain and Tsarist Russia; both wished to obtain the contract for the line. Zhan recog‑nised at once the importance of the project. He wrote in a letter to Mrs Northrop, with whom he had stayed as a student in New Haven: “If the Beijing ‑Zhangjiakou project turned out to be a failure, it would not only

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city44be my misfortune, but also the misfortune of all Chinese engineers and a great loss for China. Before and even after I undertook the project, many foreigners declared that Chinese engineers would never be able to handle the stonework and caves between Beijing and Zhangjiakou, but I am sure that I could succeed.” It was no simple project. While the first 83 km ran over flat plains, the line then had to find a way through mountains 550 metres high. Zhan began surveys in the summer of 1905 and construction of the first 83 km section started in the autumn. After this was completed, the area suffered the worst floods for 40 years and washed away the railway embankment. So, Zhan had to spend 32,000 pounds (sterling) in repairs; these con‑sisted of large retaining walls and 17 large concrete culverts, to carry off rainfall. This section contained 21 bridges in steel and concrete, the long‑est being 90 metres with five spans. While its long span section was made in England, the rest of the steel material for the bridge was produced in China – as were all the other steel structures on the line.After completing this section over the plains, Zhan faced the Nankou Pass. He designed a zigzag upward railway by switching back the line to overcome the steep gradient. But parts were too steep, so it was necessary to build four tunnels below the pass, 21 kilometres long. One was through limestone, the other three through solid granite. The longest and most complex tunnel construction undertaken in China, be‑ing 1,100 metres, ran 19 metres below the Great Wall. It was completed within a year and was lined throughout with concrete. A total of 489,000 cubic metres of material were excavated for the construction, half of them solid rock. The line was curved and sloping. To pull carriages through this difficult stretch, Zhan had to look abroad – he ordered three engines from the North British Locomotive Company. He put them at Nankou station, at the foot of the pass. They carried the trains up to Qing Long Qiao, a distance of 21 kilometres, in two hours. From there, smaller locomotives took the trains onward to Kalgan. The line was comparable in standard and design to those built in foreign countries. Construction began in August 1905 and was complet‑ed in July 1909, below budget and two years ahead of schedule. The cost was greatly reduced by not employing foreign engineers, whose salaries and allowances were several times higher than those paid to Chinese.

Chapter 3: Zhan Tian-you45During that four ‑year period, building the Beijing ‑Kalgan line was Zhan’s priority; but he also worked as a consultant on other lines, in Sichuan and Nanjing.In 1909, he was promoted to Deputy Vice ‑President, Ministry of Post and Communications. In 1910, he was invited to attend the International Railway Congress in Belgium but did not go, probably due to his heavy workload.Xinhai Revolution and promotionIn the months leading up the Xinhai Revolution of October 1911 (which overthrew the Qing, China’s last imperial dynasty), things became increasingly chaotic in Guangzhou, where Zhan was then based. Wealthy merchants fled to the safety of Hong Kong. Among Zhan’s staff in the railway company, many had the same idea; friends told Zhan to leave. But he convened a meeting of his managers and told them he was deter‑mined to stay. “Anyone who wants can leave but must find someone to replace him and ensure a continuity of service,” he said. Thanks to his leadership, none of the managers left. During the revolutionary period, the Guangzhou Railway Bureau maintained its normal services. But, in neighbouring areas, many manag‑ers fled and services were severely disrupted.After the Xinhai Revolution, the new government appointed him chief engineer of the Guangdong ‑Wuhan railway. He built lines between Guangzhou and Shaoguan, and between Wuchang and Changsha; as well as completed the planning of the line between Wuhan and Sichuan. From 1912 to 1918, he was director of the Sichuan ‑Hankou‑‑Guangzhou railways, based in Hankou. In 1913, he was appointed Technical Director of the Ministry of Transport, enabling him to in‑troduce national standards for railways all over China; these included a standard gauge and Janney couplers on all railroads. That year, he established the Chinese Institute of Engineers and became its first pres‑ident; he was re ‑elected five times. In 1909, he became a member of the American Society of Engineers. In 1911, he became an associate mem‑ber of the Institute of Civil Engineers of Britain. In both cases, he was the first Chinese to be so honoured.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city46In 1916, Hong Kong University awarded him an honorary doc‑torate in law. In February 1919, he represented China on the technical board of the Inter ‑Allied Railway Committee in negotiations on control of the Trans ‑Siberian and Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) after World War One. He travelled to Harbin and Vladivostok to attend the meet‑ings. The aim of the Chinese delegation was to try to take control of the CER; it ran from Chita in Siberia through Heilongjiang and its cap‑ital Harbin to the port of Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean. Opening in 1901, it had been built by Tsarist Russia, who had managed it ever since. During the meetings, the weather was bitterly cold; Zhan was suf‑fering from overwork, a heart condition, and a stomach illness, He had to take leave and consult a doctor. On 20 April, he returned to Hankou and was admitted to hospital the next day. His condition worsened and he died on 22 April 1919, at the age of 58. According to the wishes set out in his will, he was buried in a western suburb of Beijing. His col‑leagues held memorial events for him in different cities of China, includ‑ing Beijing, Hankou, Shanghai, and Tianjin.Memorials and statuesOn 24 April 1922, the government erected a bronze statue of him at Qinglongqiao railway station, with an inscription honouring his achieve‑ment. This was the place where he achieved his greatest engineering feat. In 1987, a museum in his honour opened at Badaling on the Great Wall. In October 2005, on the 100th anniversary of the start of construction of the railway, Zhangjiakou government unveiled a statue of him at the city’s Southern railway station. There is also one of him on the campus of Beijing Transport University in the Haidian district of the capital. A film based on his life was released in 2000.Visitors to Guangzhou can visit his former residence on Enning Road in the Liwan district. It is a typical house of the late Qing Dynasty and early Republican period, containing antique furniture, such as an old Chinese square table, sleeping chair, and stools. On one of the walls hangs a couplet reading “Living simply with celestial beings as his com‑panions; Possessing unyielding character that is rare in the real world”; this was a gift from one of his friends.

Chapter 3: Zhan Tian-you47It has a good collection of Zhan’s belongings including a steel rail from the Beijing ‑Zhangjiakou Railway, the copper bell used at the Beijing ‑Zhangjiakou Railway, a sample box of steel, his drawing appa‑ratus, copybook and ink dish as well as the resume he drew up himself, and a replica of instructions from Yuan Shikai, President of the Republic of China from 10 March 1912 to 1 January 1916. The historical materials are divided into three categories: those from his earliest residence in Guangzhou and study overseas; those from after his return from overseas and the start of import of advanced technology; and equipment to build the railways and protect national sovereignty in their construction.They can also visit the house Zhan built in Hankou in 1912, a two‑‑storey building in wood and brick in the Western style. In June 2001, the State Council declared it a National Priority Cultural Site.  A Macao wifeIn 1889, in Macao, he married Tan Ju ‑zhen, the fourth daughter of Tang Bocun. They had eight children. They were born in five different places, including Guangzhou, Shanhaiguan, Jinzhou, and Beijing, reflect‑ing the different posts that Zhan was sent during his railway work.Ju ‑zhen’s health was not good. She suffered from a lung disease causing her to cough blood, which often confined her to her bed. Medical treatment was unable to improve her condition significantly and she could not give full attention to her husband. Friends proposed to him that he take a concubine; but he refused, saying that he wished to remain loyal to his beloved wife. Among the rich and high ‑ranking members of Guangzhou society, taking a concubine was common. One wealthy mer‑chant had more than 50 and reformer Kang You ‑wei had six. Zhan earned 1,000 silver taels a month in salary and allowances. He had comfortable financial means to take a concubine but would not. He was a keen tennis player. Next to the family home in Hankou he built a tennis court, where he used to play with his children. He loved chrysanthemums – the second character of his wife’s name – and kept them at home. He also liked domestic birds. After his death, his wife moved from their house in the Russian concession of Hankou to

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city48Beijing. Her health did not improve. She died in 1926 at the age of 59, the same age as her husband. She was buried next to him in a western suburb of Beijing.Their first son, Zhan Wen ‑guang, studied mechanical engineering at Tri ‑State College in Angola, Indiana. Their second son, Zhan Wen‑‑cong followed his father’s footsteps attending Sheffield Scientific School to study civil engineering; he graduated in 1918 with a Ph.B. After he returned to China, he served as engineer or director on several of the railways his father had built.SourcesBaidu biography of Zhan Tian ‑you; China Educational Mission Connections; Global Times newspaper; “Old Stories of Macao” edited by Song Fu ‑lin and published in 2009 by the Macao Songshan Study Publishing Firm; Railway Wonders of the World; Chinese Communist Party news website

Sir Robert Ho TungChapter 4

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city50

Chapter 4: Sir Robert Ho Tung51Eurasian millionaire leaves giant legacy in Macao and Hong KongIn the centre of historic Macao stands an elegant yellow three‑‑storey building with arched windows and an arcaded façade. It is sur‑rounded by a spacious garden, with lawns, walkways, and trees that are over 100 years old.This is the Sir Robert Ho Tung Library, the largest in the city, containing 100,000 volumes, including a treasure trove of 5,000 an‑cient Chinese classics. It is the only library in Hong Kong and Macao to have such a spacious garden, measuring more than 1,500 square metres.The building is one of many legacies left in the two cities by a remarkable man: Sir Robert Ho Tung. A Eurasian, born in December 1862, he became the richest man in Hong Kong, and was the first non‑‑white to live in an exclusive area of the colony previously reserved for Europeans. He was decorated by many governments for his charitable and educational work.He was one of the most successful compradors – the middle‑man between exporters of Chinese goods and foreign companies who bought them. Indeed, he became one of the first international Hong Kong businessmen, investing in many cities outside the colony, and travelling frequently to Europe and North America.He knew members of the British royal family and government. In a tour of Europe in 1932, he met French president Albert Lebrun and German president Paul von Hindenburg.Since Hong Kong’s colonial government did little for its Chinese population, it was left to Ho Tung and other merchants to pay for schools, hospitals, and other welfare facilities. This tradition of busi‑ness philanthropy has continued in Hong Kong until today.Nor did he neglect his mother country – he supported Dr Sun Yat ‑sen in his revolution against the Qing dynasty. One day he would dress in ceremonial uniform to receive a Qing official; the next day he would be giving money to the revolutionary cause. He was also a friend of reformers Kang You ‑wei and Chiang Kai ‑shek, two of the most important figures of modern China.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city52Childhood and educationHo Tung was born on 22 December 1862 in D’Aguilar Street, Hong Kong. His father was Charles Henry Maurice Bosman, of Dutch and Jewish ancestry; his mother was Sze Tai, a Chinese lady from Baoan county, now Shenzhen, in Guangdong. He was the first child in the fam‑ily; he went on to have three sisters and four brothers. His father was a merchant who had his own company, Bosman and Company. He was also part ‑owner of the Hong Kong Hotel, which opened in 1868, and a director of the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company. But, in about 1870, Charles Bosman abandoned his wife and chil‑dren and went to Britain; he appears to have gone bankrupt. It was a terrible blow to his family, leaving them without the financial and emo‑tional support to which they had become accustomed. Ho Tung and his first brother Ho Fook had to go to the streets and pick up nails and scrap metal; they took what they could find and sold it to a metal dealer. With the money, they bought food.Bosman was pronounced Bo ‑se ‑man; transliterated into Cantonese, this became Ho Sze ‑man. Later in life, when Ho Tung travelled, he car‑ried a certificate from the Governor of Hong Kong, stating that his father was Dutch.Then the boys had a great piece of good fortune. They met Dr Frederick Stewart, the Scotsman who was principal of the Government Central School, the first public secondary school in Hong Kong; it is now known as Queens College. He took a liking to the two young men and invited them to attend his school. They could not have met a better pa‑tron. At the age of 25, Stewart arrived in Hong Kong in February 1862 to take the position of principal of Central School, as well as inspector of all government schools in Hong Kong.In June 1865, he also became first head of the government’s Education Department. He is considered the father of education in the colony, because he introduced a Western model of teaching. Rare among British officials, he spoke fluent Cantonese, which gave him a closeness to Chinese that his expatriate colleagues did not enjoy.

Chapter 4: Sir Robert Ho Tung53Ho Tung and three of his brothers went to the Central School. His grandson, Robert H.N. Ho, wrote that Stewart was the “Santa Claus” of his grandfather. “If there were expenses for the boys’ schooling, I suspect Stewart paid them,” according to the official family history. “Why do I think this? When Stewart died alone in Hong Kong (in 1889), my grandfa‑ther, then a wealthy man, helped bury him and wrote a message on his head‑stone. He really appreciated Stewart. Every Christmas and Easter, members of the Ho family go to bow in front of Stewart’s grave in the Protestant cem‑etery in Happy Valley. Sir Robert Ho Tung starts with Frederick Stewart.”The Central School was unusual in many ways. One was that it accepted boys of all nationalities. Secondly, it was bilingual, with four hours of learning in English and four in Chinese each day. For Ho Tung and his brothers, no better school could be imagined. It gave them train‑ing for the two worlds, Chinese and expatriate, in which they would live and prosper.Other expat schools were closed to children of Chinese parents and taught only in English, the official language of the colony. Despite the generosity of Dr Stewart, Ho Tung had to be careful with his spending. Each day his mother gave him three tenths of a Hong Kong cent for lunch; he spent two tenths on the meal and saved the other. He and his two brothers were excellent students. He graduated in 1878, at the age of 16. Sun Yat ‑sen was a fellow alumnus of the school.Ho applied for a post as a clerk in the Guangzhou office of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, under Inspector ‑General Sir Robert Hart. Many others applied for the coveted position in a govern‑ment department that was both stable and offered good pay. Despite being the youngest candidate, Ho Tung won the place. His salary was HK$30 a month. But he only worked in the customs for two years. His talents needed something more challenging than a desk job. So, he resigned in 1880 and went to work as junior assistant comprador for Jardine, Matheson & Co, the biggest trading company in Hong Kong. This was an environment more suited to his business skills, his languages and his ability to live in the two worlds, both Chinese and expatriate. Starting as an interpreter and assistant, he rose quickly in the firm.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city54Family lifeOn 2 December 1881, he married Margaret Sau Ying Mak, then 16 years old. Like Ho Tung, she was a Eurasian, the daughter of Hector Coll Maclean (who worked with him at Jardines) and his Chinese wife. Over the next three years, he showed his business acumen. In 1883, he took up the agency for two Jardine ‑related companies, Hong Kong Fire Company and Canton Insurance Company, and ran them success‑fully. Then, in 1884, he brokered a major purchase of a sugar company for Jardine’s and saved his employer a huge amount of money; he himself earned a commission of HK$20,000, most of which he shared with his brother ‑in ‑law and colleagues. He also set up his own firm. Ho Tong & Company, and did well through trading on his own account and in ship‑ping and property.His grandson Robert H.N. Ho explained the way Robert Ho Tung did business.“He always told me: ‘When doing business, you have to look at a guy and feel whether you trust him.’ You had to learn to read the person be‑cause it was very difficult to dig up his true worth in those days. Apparently, my grandfather was very successful at this …How did he learn to read peo‑ple so well? I think he was just born with the talent. He was very sharp. He always asked the right question about a person… Another of his traits was he was always smiling and complimentary. He would say ‘good morning’, even to a beggar in the street. He had a very good reputation.”In 1885, his younger brother won a prestigious scholarship to study engineering in the UK. He adopted the name Walter Bosman and devel‑oped his career overseas. In 1890, Ho Tung became the head comprador of Jardine’s. The next year he was appointed a Justice of the Peace.He was unable to have children with his wife Margaret Sau Ying Mak. About 1889, they adopted Ho Sai Wing, the eldest son of his broth‑er Ho Kook. In 1891, he took Chow Yee Man as a concubine in order to try to have children. In 1892, he travelled to London for the first time and may have met his father, then a naturalised British subject. This is what grandson Robert H.N. Ho remembers: “Regarding my grandfather’s own father, Bosman, it is sketchy. I was told he did meet him in England on one of his trips there with Margaret. But I can’t

Chapter 4: Sir Robert Ho Tung55substantiate that. And he never, ever, talked to me about his father. Never. Nobody dared ask that.”In 1893, Ho became a member of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, a position he held for the rest of his life. That year he suf‑fered a severe bout of pneumonia and nearly died. He still had no children, either with Margaret or his concubine. So, in 1895, with the agreement of Margaret, he married her first cousin, Clara Lin Kok Cheung. He travelled with her for nine months in Japan and the United States. He often used the name Bosman when travelling, for the sake of convenience. In 1896, his mother, Madame Sze, passed away; from then on, he kept her portrait with him even when he was travelling. In 1897, Clara gave birth to Ho Tung’s first child, named Victoria Jubilee. She bore him a total of three sons and seven daughters. A devout Buddhist, she encouraged him to engage in the charity work which occupied an important part of his later life. She established the first school in Hong Kong for the teaching of Buddhism.Leading the Chinese communityIn addition to his business activities, Ho Tung became to play an increasing role as a leader of the Chinese community. Hong Kong was a colonial city, in which expatriates, especially British people, enjoyed rights and privileges denied to Chinese. In 1895, Ho organised a peti‑tion to protest against discriminatory Light and Pass Regulations which Chinese had to follow when they went out at night. He also began his career in philanthropy, something he continued for the rest of his life. His grandson remembers: “One thing my grandfa‑ther drilled into me in English and Chinese has become a family motto – ‘You must learn how to give before you receive’. He would dwell on that and always reminisce about how he made his money.” Ho was the founder and first chairman of the Chinese Club, which he set up in response to the Hong Kong Club, the most prestigious social club in the colony which was founded in 1846 and only admitted British men. The new club was set up in 1897 by Chinese community leaders and welcomed Chinese and Eurasians. In the same year, he was granted land for the Chiu Yuen Cemetery for Eurasians at Mount Davis; he moved the

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city56grave of his mother there. In 1898, he became chairman of Tung Wah Hospital, one of the most important medical institutions in the city. He would remain on its board for decades.Property had become his principal business. In 1899, he closed a deal as agent for several lots in Central for HK$435,000, the largest transaction in Hong Kong at that time. His grandson Robert H.N. Ho remembered:“My grandfather used every bit of the money he made ‑ after sup‑porting the family ‑ to buy property. He wouldn’t squander his money. That was a lesson he taught me too. Always live within your means. Don’t be expensive. Be low key, as we say these days.”In 1900, he took a major decision – to leave his position as head comprador of Jardine’s – and devote his energy to his own company. His brother Ho Fook took over the post at Jardine’s. He had two reasons – one was his poor health; the other was that, despite being only 38, he had built up such a large network of connections, in the Chinese and expatri‑ate worlds, as comprador that he could prosper on his own. He had already become one of Hong Kong’s richest men, with a personal fortune of more than HK$2 million. In 1902, with other mem‑bers of a “China Syndicate”, he became a major shareholder in the Hong Kong Telegraph, an English ‑language newspaper. In 1914, he was a founder of the Tai Yau Bank.In 1902, he donated money to the government for a school in Kowloon, to be known as Kowloon British School or the Central British School. His idea was a school similar to the one he himself had attended, open to people of all nationalities. But the government did not follow his wishes; the King George V School it built with the money was reserved for European children.In 1906, he and his family became the first non ‑Europeans allowed to live on The Peak, the most expensive and most comfortable district of Hong Kong, then as it is today. Previously, it had been reserved for Europeans. Ho acquired three one ‑storey houses there through a European friend. This acquisition procedure by someone who was not white was so complex that it had to go to Britain for approval. His second wife, Clara, said that the location, on the mountain overlooking the urban area and the harbour, would be better for the health of their children. To minimise conflict among his women, he put his two wives and his concubine and

Chapter 4: Sir Robert Ho Tung57their families in separate houses. But he himself continued to live most of the time at Idlewild, a spacious residence in the Mid ‑Levels.In 1910, he fell dangerously ill from overwork and exhaustion. His weight fell to less than 60 pounds. He was confined to his bed for over a year. Clara nursed him through the crisis, caring for him night and day and reciting Buddhist scriptures. Thanks to her care, he recovered from the illness and lived for another 46 years.Travelling the worldHo Tung travelled widely, to China, Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America, journeys that lasted several months since passenger ships were the main form of transport. He used these voyages to explore busi‑ness deals, build up his personal network and enjoy tourism. He took members of his family – his first wife to Western countries and his second wife to China – as well as his children, to show them life outside Hong Kong and enable them to improve their English. In 1908, he visited the United States, using the name H.T. Bosman. But he was threatened with deportation for bringing two wives. So, Clara returned home and Ho Tung was allowed to stay on in San Francisco with Margaret. He received medical treatment there.In December 1929, Clara embarked on a four ‑month tour of Buddhist sites in India, Burma, Thailand, and Malaysia. During that era, it was an unusual man who allowed his wife and children to travel on their own. In 1932, he visited London with Margaret as part of a “Golden Honeymoon” in Europe. He rode in a Zeppelin on a sight ‑seeing tour over the capital with his daughter Irene. The next year, he went to London for the World Economic Conference, He received surgery there for problems with his digestive system and recuperated in Europe.Three worldsOne of Ho’s characteristics was his ability to operate effortlessly in three different worlds – Hong Kong, mainland China, and the West. He had personal and business networks in all three and knew how to sustain them. He maintained good relations with both Britain, the

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city58colonial power, and the Nationalist government of China. In 1914, at the start of World War One, he donated HK$50,000 for the purchase of two British military planes and ambulances for the war effort. The next year, British King George V made him a Knight Bachelor, one of the first Hong Kong ‑born people to receive a knighthood. In 1924, he attended the British Empire Exhibition in London with Margaret; he served in the capacity of honorary commissioner. They met Queen Mary, wife of King George V.In 1915, he donated money to the medical faculty of the University of Hong Kong. The next year he was honoured as one of the first five recipients of an honorary degree at its first congregation. In 1920, he founded an Old Boys’ Association for his alma mater Government Central School, which was then called Queen’s College.In 1914, he received the Third ‑Class Order of the Excellent Crop, the first of several honours from the Nationalist government. A Chinese patriot, he was active in trying to bring peace and unity to the country. In 1923, Ho Tung met Dr Sun Yat ‑sen in Hong Kong, when he made a famous speech at the city’s university. It was Ho’s son Edward, then President of the Student Union at the university, who gave the welcome address before Dr Sun’s speech. That same year he tried to organise a round table conference to bring together the different warlords in China to discuss peace. He did not succeed in this endeavour. In the observation of his grandson, Robert H.N. Ho: “In the warlords’ era, my grandfather thought he could talk to the more powerful ones to unite China. With being in Hong Kong and an individual not involved in the conflict, he thought he could be the peace‑maker. He was also wealthy enough to be recognised by these warlords because they needed money to buy ammunition and supplies. He thought he was in a strong enough position to stop the fighting and unite China. But who was going to be the leader? None of them could agree on that. So he failed, mainly because of different interests.” Ho also included among his friends Kang You ‑wei, who advocat‑ed non ‑violent reform during the Qing dynasty, and Chiang Kai ‑shek, China’s president during the Nationalist era.In 1929, he tried again to organise a round table peace ‑meeting to end hostilities between the warring factions in China. In 1931, he went

Chapter 4: Sir Robert Ho Tung59to Shanghai and Beijing, where he met Zhang Xue ‑liang, the warlord in control of Manchuria, the three provinces of the northeast. His son, Robert Shai Li, acted as interpreter as Ho did not speak Mandarin well. On 18 September, the three were attending an opera to raise funds for charity when the Japanese military launched its operation to take over Manchuria. Marshal Zhang lost his kingdom.In 1936, Ho held a celebration at Idlewild, his Hong Kong home, to mark the 50th birthday of President Chiang Kai ‑shek. He donated money to buy a plane for the Nationalist government and, in return, received a large photograph of the president. He also met Sun Fo, son of Dr Sun Yat ‑sen, in Hong Kong. In May the next year, he went to Nanjing, the capital, for an industrial exhibition and to discuss investment. He met President Chiang and donated money to Nationalist causes. Clara be‑came a senior figure in women’s war relief organisations in Hong Kong.Business empire expandsIn the 20th century, Ho’s business interests greatly expanded. He became a director of many companies, including the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, Hong Kong Electric, Hong Kong Tram, and Hong Kong Land. His own company did general trading and invested in military vessels and property. It had extensive investments in Shanghai, Qingdao, and Manchuria, as well as Hong Kong and Macao.In 1922, he mediated in a strike involving 30,000 Chinese seamen from Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Their union called a strike to protest against the refusal of shipping companies to increase salaries and bring them closer to those of non ‑Chinese seamen. The strike began in January 1922 and greatly interrupted the transport of food to Hong Kong. The colonial government declared it illegal.With major interests in shipping and trading, Ho Tung was serious‑ly affected by the strike. He and other merchants played a major role in mediating between the union, the shipping companies and the govern‑ment, which helped to end the strike on 6 March, after 53 days. But the seamen later accused him and the government of not honouring their promises. They took their case to the International Labour Conference, but to no avail.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city60In 1925, both Hong Kong and Guangzhou were severely hit by a general strike. It was a strike and boycott that took place in both cities from June 1925 to October 1926. It began as a response to shooting incidents on 30 May in Shanghai; when Chinese protestors were killed by policemen, including Chinese and Sikh, under British command. Ho Tung was one target of the anger of the strikers, but he was absent from Hong Kong for much of the year.In 1928, he took over an ailing Hong Kong newspaper, the Industrial and Commercial Daily, and turned it around through capi‑tal investment and restructuring.On 5 January 1938, his wife Clara passed away. That same month his younger brother Walter Bosman arrived back in Hong Kong after an absence of 53 years.Escaping the JapaneseIn January 1941, to celebrate 100 years under British rule, the colony’s radio station invited him to give his reflections on life for Centenary Talks broadcasts.On 2 December that year, more than 1,000 people gathered at the Hong Kong Hotel to celebrate the diamond wedding anniversary of Ho Tung and Margaret. It is the largest such event ever hosted by the hotel. Hong Kong governor Sir Mark Young proposed the toast; the Governor of Macao, Gabriel Teixeira, was also present. The guests presented the family with a brooch featuring two golden peaches to symbolise longevity. All the family had been invited and took part in this important event; but there was one notable absentee – Ho Tung’s son, Robert Shai Lai, an officer in the Chinese Nationalist Army. On 4 December, Ho Tung took a boat to his house in Macao, saying that he wished to recover from the anniversary celebrations. The home, Number 3 Largo Sto Agostinho, had been built in 1894 for Carolina Antonia da Cunha, the wife of a high colonial official. It passed through several owners before Ho Tung purchased it in 1918 for 16,000 patacas as a summer retreat. Then, as now, it occupied a prime downtown site, next to the St Joseph Seminary and the Church

Chapter 4: Sir Robert Ho Tung61of Saint Augustine. The area today is part of the World Heritage Site of Macao. Three days after Ho Tung had gone to Macao, the Japanese military launched its attack on Hong Kong. On Christmas Day, the British governor surrendered.His grandson, Robert H.N. Ho, believes that Ho Tung went to Macao because he knew in advance of the Japanese attack, probably thanks to a tip ‑off from the son who was absent from the big party.“My grandfather had summoned all relatives to come back to cel‑ebrate the anniversary. Thus, all of them … except my father (Robert Shai Lai). My grandparents were extremely upset that one of their sons would not show up for such an event. Later, it turned out my father knew exactly when the Japanese attack was coming because he was working in co ‑operation with British intelligence at that time. All the Chinese gov‑ernment higher ‑ups knew. But he could not tell. He just did not show up. After the celebration, just before the war began, my grandfather said he was tired and wanted to go to Macao to rest. That’s the story. Now, we all wonder. Why would he have to go to Macao to rest? Could he have known? And the only person who could have told him was my father.”Ho Tung made a wise choice. Macao was the only city in East Asia that was not under Japanese military occupation and would re‑main so until the end of the war on 15 August 1945. Ho Tung enjoyed freedom and material comfort he would not have had in Hong Kong or any other city under Japanese control. Since he was such a promi‑nent citizen, the Japanese wanted him to return to Hong Kong. His grandson Robert H.N. Ho recalled: “The Japanese actually went to Macao to ask him to come back. But my grandfather simply said that he was sick, They tried, but he would not go.” After his ar‑rival in Macao, Ho Tung had little money. “He borrowed from an old friend, Kou Ho Neng, who ran the casino business in those days. Kou was a big man in Macau at that time and he and my grandfather were already friends. Of course, my grandfather later repaid everything.” He spent the war in seclusion at his Macao home.In 1944, his wife Margaret was baptised a Christian. She died that year in Hong Kong and was buried in the Protestant cemetery in Happy Valley.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city62Triumphant returnAfter the Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945, the British au‑thorities in Hong Kong were eager to persuade Ho Tung to return as soon as possible. His presence there would reassure the thousands of Hong Kong people who had taken refuge in the mainland or else‑where in an attempt to escape the Japanese; the message would be that, if Ho Tung had gone back, it was safe for them to do so as well. Ho Tung would also be a symbol of the return of British rule, at a time when it was uncertain whether they would be able to re ‑assume control of this important colony. Would the Nationalist government demand its return?His grandson Robert H.N. Ho recalled: “British military com‑mander Admiral Cecil Harcourt called my grandfather in Macao and said: ‘I am coming to get you.’ He was coming himself. There would be a boat back to Hong Kong – Queen’s Pier – and a ceremony to let Hong Kong people know he was back. He was Mister Hong Kong then. My grandfather agreed.” The ceremony was an important step in the British resumption of control of the city.After his return, the first thing Ho Tung did was to visit the grave of his wife Margaret in the Protestant cemetery. He asked the British government to give her the title of Honorary Dame of Grace. In 1948, he donated HK$1 million to the University of Hong Kong for the Lady Ho Tung Hall women’s hostel, in memory of his wife. Despite his advanced age, Ho Tung threw himself back into his business. He had to get oper‑ations back and running after the disruption of nearly four years of the war. He also sought compensation for the losses he had suffered.In 1946, the colonial authorities held a ceremony at Government House to welcome back Governor Sir Mark Young, the man who had surrendered to the Japanese on Christmas Day 1941. Ho Tung com‑posed the address of welcome, to thank Sir Mark for his speech during the diamond anniversary event in December 1941, shortly before the invasion and surrender.In 1949, Ho Tung’s business suffered a severe blow when the People’s Republic was established and confiscated all his real estate in

Chapter 4: Sir Robert Ho Tung63Shanghai. “Not too many people know that his property portfolio in Shanghai was even bigger than in Hong Kong,” recalled his grandson Robert H.N. Ho. “He lost every bit of it after the Communist Party took over. He just wiped it out. All he was left with was Hong Kong.” Nevertheless, he remained active in his work. “He was always a very busy man. He had a phone beside his bed and a phone beside his chair. He was always on business, even when he was 90. He was very alert. ‘Should I buy that? Should I sell that?’”In 1949, at the age of 86, he went on a world tour. During this, he met Irish author George Bernard Shaw and French President Vincent Auriol. In 1955, he was awarded a second knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II and became a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE); he flew to Britain and attended the ceremony at Buckingham Palace in a wheelchair.Charitable knightIn his later years, Ho Tung devoted much of his time and money to charity and education. He was one of the founders of Hong Kong University and a director of Tung Wah Hospitals and Po Leung Kuk. The first Tung Wah hospital was established in 1870, providing free Chinese medical services to the sick and the poor. It built two more hospitals in 1911 and 1929 and has become the largest charitable or‑ganisation in Hong Kong. Now it has 2,670 beds in five hospitals, 2,000 service centres, and an annual turnover of HK$4.7 billion. Founded in November 1878, the Po Leung Kuk has become Hong Kong’s largest non ‑government provider of social services. Ho also do‑nated to the Kiang Wu Hospital and the Bao Jue Yi Xue Buddhist cen‑tre, both in Macao. A devout Buddhist, his wife donated generously to Buddhist charities.In recognition for his charity and education work, Ho Tung received awards from many governments, including Britain, China, Portugal, France, Germany, and Italy. In 1915, he was knighted by King George V of Britain and again in 1955. He was decorated by the Portuguese government in 1952.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city64PassingOn 26 April 1956, Ho Tung passed away at the age of 93 at his home Idlewild in Seymour Road, Hong Kong. He was buried next to his wife Margaret in the Protestant cemetery in Happy Valley. In his will, he left instructions for the permanent upkeep of his and Margaret’s graves, as well as those of his former headmaster Frederick Stewart and his father ‑in ‑law, Hector Maclean.He also left HK$500,000 to establish the Sir Robert Ho Tung Charitable Fund. Thanks to the money being wisely invested, it donates about HK$10 million a year to almost 200 projects. The fund is man‑aged by HSBC Trustee (HK) Limited. The fund’s beneficiaries include the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, Po Leung Kuk, the Hong Kong Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Hong Kong Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Family Planning Association.Few men have left such a rich legacy in Hong Kong and Macao. This legacy is both physical and spiritual. It is physical in terms of the properties he left behind, his many donations and the charitable foundation and his large family. His brother Ho Fook had 13 sons, of whom five worked as compradors for foreign companies. One of his grandsons is Stanley Ho, the Macao casino and shipping magnate. Another brother, Ho Kom ‑tong, had 12 wives and more than 30 chil‑dren. One of them was the mother of Kung Fu star Bruce Lee. His former house, Kom Tong Hall, in the Mid ‑Levels, now houses the Dr Sun Yat ‑sen Museum.In Hong Kong, many schools and buildings are named after him, including the Lady Ho Tung Hall at Hong Kong University, the Ho Tung Secondary School, and the Tung Lin Kok ‑yuen Buddhist temple.Library in MacaoThe library was his largest gift to Macao. After his death in April 1956, he bequeathed the house to the government as a Chinese library, with a legacy of HK$25,000 to buy books. It opened officially as a public library on 1 August 1958, with 3,000 volumes. After the hando‑ver to China in 1999, the SAR government invested 10 million patacas

Chapter 4: Sir Robert Ho Tung65in a new structure at the back of the house, to hold more books and provide all the attributes of a modern library. It went into use on 13 November 2006.Now the library boasts 3,195 square metres of floor space, 1,583 square metres of garden, and 544 seats for working. It holds more than 100,000 books and is equipped with modern facilities; including a multimedia room, exhibition space, broadband computers, and music and film rooms.It attracts about 1,000 people a day, of whom half read the books, including many students from nearby schools. At the weekend, all the reading tables are full. The main treasure of the library is 5,000 ancient Chinese books, of which Ho Tung was an avid collector. “He was a man of culture and bought these books over a long period of time,” said Gary Ngai, president of the Macao Association for the Promotion of Exchanges between the Asia ‑Pacific and Latin America. Ngai was a sen‑ior official of the Cultural Affairs Bureau, the body who decided to build the extension to the library.“Other people bought these books then sold them on after read‑ing them. Ho Tung did not need the money so he kept them. There are few libraries in the mainland with such a collection of ancient books. The Red Guards destroyed many of them during the Cultural Revolution. Scholars from the mainland come to see the library and express their admiration.”The government has made a substantial investment in a cooling system to control the humidity in the library and prevent the old books from being damaged by moisture since Macao has a hot and humid cli‑mate. The library collection focuses on old books. It includes 5,000 an‑cient Chinese books, along with 79,924 more recent volumes that cover Literature, History, Philosophy, Art, and Architecture. It also has 4,925 multimedia materials, as well as 72 newspapers, and 732 magazines.There is a bucolic feel to the library, with the venue surrounded by plants and water fountains and running water in the background. In the middle of Praça de Santo Agostinho, once you pass the main entrance leading to an outdoor area, there is a series of tables surrounded by green vegetation, welcoming those who are looking for a more relaxed place. Tang Mei Lin, chief of the new Department of Management of Public Libraries – former Director of the Macau Central Library – said

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city66the building was the preferred location for those that live or work nearby or those interested in cultural affairs. “Students who are nearby come here during weekdays, as do middle ‑aged people. During lunch time, people working nearby come here too. At the weekends, young people who have an interest in culture come,” she said, emphasising that it is one of the favourite venues of local people due to the historical feel. “Tourists come here as well.” At the weekends, people mostly go to the Sir Robert Ho Tung Library looking for the outdoor area and for the cultural events. “We organise a lot here, since we have more space for that here.”Ho Tung’s other legacies in Macao are two institutions named after him – a kindergarten and a Sino ‑Portuguese primary school that was set up in 1951. Located in Estrada da Vitoria, it has more than 200 students and 23 teachers.Ho Tung’s legacy was spiritual in the personal example he set, the first Eurasian to establish a substantial business empire and become part of the ruling class of Hong Kong. He operated comfortably in the three worlds into which he was born – Hong Kong, the British elite, and the mainland. Few people did that. “He was a diplomat in the civil sector,” said Ngai. “He was a bridge between China and the West. He was equal‑ly at home in the strict rituals of both the Qing government and the British aristocracy.”SourcesThe main source for this chapter is the biography of Sir Robert Ho Tung published by the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation, to which we express our thanks.

Dr Sun Yat ‑senChapter 5

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city68

Chapter 5: Dr Sun Yat-sen69Macao played key role in life of Dr Sun Yat ‑senMacao played a key role in the life of Dr Sun Yat ‑sen, the father of China’s revolution in 1911, which brought an end to over 2,000 years of imperial rule and established Asia’s first democratic republic. It was the city where his father worked for many years, where he started his medical practice and a Portuguese newspaper man saved his life by sheltering him from arrest after a failed uprising. It was also the city where his family lived for many years after the revolution; this home is now the Sun Yat ‑sen Memorial House. The city also has a park named after him.“The experience of living in Hong Kong and Macao was critical to Sun’s thinking,” said Ye Chun, a historian in Hong Kong. “A man from rural China saw two societies that were orderly and well managed. It made him ask why Chinese could not run their own affairs.” The city re‑members him in many ways. In November 2016, it opened as a museum one of two clinic/pharmacies, which Sun had operated during his time as a doctor. The Cultural Affairs Bureau spent five years on a meticulous restoration of the building.A village boyIn 1849, Sun’s father, Sun Dacheng, came to Macao and worked as a cobbler for 16 years in a shoe shop. Then he returned to his home‑town, Cuiheng village, 37 kilometres to the north, to farm and to marry Madame Yang. Their son, Sun Yat ‑sen, was born on 12 November 1866. The village was in Xiangshan county, renamed Zhongshan in 1925, in honour of Sun Yat ‑sen; he was also known as Sun Zhongshan. The coun‑ty, in Guangdong province, borders Macao.In 1879, mother and son passed through Macao on their way to Hong Kong where they took a British steamship for Hawaii. It was there that he lived with his brother Sun Mei, 15 years his senior, who had ar‑rived there as a labourer and become a prosperous merchant. In Hawaii, Sun learnt English from scratch and studied at secondary school. In 1885, he returned to his hometown to marry Lu Mu ‑zhen, the daughter

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city70of a Chinese merchant in Hawaii. It was a marriage arranged by the two families, as this was the custom at the time.Then he moved to Hong Kong to study at what is now the Diocesan Boys’ School, one of the most famous in the colony, and continued his education at Queen’s College. His outstanding exam results enabled him to study medicine at what became the medical school of Hong Kong University; he was one of the first two Chinese graduates in 1892. It was at a Congregational church in Mid ‑Levels that, despite the objections of his brother Sun Mei, he was baptised as a Christian on 4 May 1884. He worshipped at the church that stands on Caine Road and is still in use today. During his time in Hong Kong, he often travelled to Macao to visit his friend Yang He ‑ling; with a group of associates, the two discussed intensely how to reform China.From doctor to exileIn September 1892, he moved to Macao, where he became the first Chinese to practise Western medicine. He worked at Kiang Wu Hospital, set up in 1871 as the first non ‑profit hospital established by and for Chinese. It offered traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and had no facil‑ities for Western treatment or operations. At that time, Macao’s Chinese doctors practised TCM; many Chinese regarded Western medicine with fear and scepticism – what did these men with white coats do with their knives and sharp needles full of liquid?The hospital gave Sun a loan of 1,440 patacas to open two clinics, one at 80 Rua des Estalagens, where he could offer both Western and Chinese medicine, and the other at 14 Largo do Senado. Every day was a busy schedule for Sun: 07:00–09:00 am at 80 Rua das Estalagens, 10:00–12:00 pm at Kiang Wu, and 1:00–3:00 pm at 14 Largo do Senado. After 3 pm, he would pay house calls to his patients. It was in Macao that Sun started his medical practice; he was the first Chinese doctor in the city to sell Western medicines.He also continued the revolutionary activities he had begun in Hong Kong; there he had held meetings and written tracts against the decay and corruption of the Qing government. One of them was published in a Macao newspaper in 1890.

Chapter 5: Dr Sun Yat-sen71In Hong Kong, he made friends with a Portuguese printer named Francisco Hermenegildo Fernandes, who was sympathetic to his ideas. He was a translator at the Hong Kong High Court and became a strong supporter. In 1892, Fernandes returned to Macao; he founded the Echo Macaense newspaper, which he published in Chinese and Portuguese. Despite the sensitivities of the issue, Fernandes published articles by and about Sun and printed advertisements for his pharmacy. He published Sun’s articles promoting political reforms as well as news of his medical work. It was distributed in Xiangshan, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Fuzhou, and Xiamen in addition to Macao.While Sun was a diligent doctor, his greater mission in life was to reform China. In the 1890s, he wrote a long article to Li Hong ‑zhang, one of the highest officials of the Qing government and a leader of the “Self ‑Strengthening Movement”, which aimed to modernise the coun‑try. The articles set out the reforms Sun considered necessary to change China and confront the Western powers. Li did not dignify him with a response. This was a critical moment for Sun; believing that the govern‑ment would not reform, he concluded that violent revolution was the only way forward.Fernandes’ family had lived in Macao for generations. It was Fernandes whom Sun asked to apply on his behalf for a licence to prac‑tice in Macao. But his career as a doctor was short ‑lived. He closed his practice in Macao in September 1893 after deciding that his mission in life was not to treat the sick but lead a revolution. Even while he was a practising doctor, he would meet with his asso‑ciates in Macao and Guangdong to plan the revolution. This brought him to the attention of the Qing government which began putting pressure on Macao authorities. This pressure became intolerable after an uprising incited by Sun and his compatriots in Guangzhou in October 1895; the rebellion failed because news of it was leaked beforehand to the gov‑ernment. It put Sun on a wanted list, and the Hong Kong government banned him from entering the city.It was at that moment that Fernandes did him another great ser‑vice. First, his newspaper Echo Macaense published an article by Sun explaining the rationale for the uprising. Then, Fernandes hid him while he was a wanted man, using friends and connections to smuggle him out

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city72of Macao by boat, first to Hong Kong and then Japan. As a token of grat‑itude for saving his life, Sun later gave his friend his medical equipment and daily items, now on display at the Dr. Sun Yat ‑sen Memorial House in Macao. When he became president at the end of 1911, Fernandes sent him a letter of congratulations, in English. His dear friend Fernandes is now buried in the St. Miguel Arcanjo Cemetery in Macao.Sun was forced to close his clinic and leave Macao. He spent his next 17 years in exile, in Japan, Europe, the United States, Vietnam, and Thailand. He spread his ideas among the overseas Chinese com‑munities and students, planned uprisings from home and raised money to finance them. During this period, Hong Kong was his most impor‑tant base on Chinese soil, with most of his activities in the Central and Western districts.The revolution succeedsAfter numerous failed uprisings, the revolutionaries finally succeed‑ed when a Qing army rebelled in Wuhan on 10 October 1911, leading to the overthrow of the Qing dynasty. On 19 December, representatives from 17 provinces elected Sun to act as provisional president of the Republic of China. But he held the post for only three months before being forced to give up the position to Yuan Shi ‑kai, the most powerful warlord in China, in April 1912.Return to MacaoAfter the revolution, Sun returned to Macao only twice. The first time, in May 1912, was to see his friends and supporters at the invitation of Chinese businessmen. He was hosted by Lou Liem Ioc (son of Lou Kau – see Chapter 2 and Chapter 7) at his home in what was then called Yiu Yuen, now the Lou Liem Ioc Park. During this visit he also met members of the Military Club in Macao. The second time, in 1913, was to see his daughter and meet Chen Jiong ‑ming. It was to be his last visit to the city. He died of liver cancer in Beijing on 12 March 1925, aged 58. On 29 March 1925, 20,000 people in Macao – one fifth of the population – at‑tended a memorial service for him at the Kiang Wu Hospital.

Chapter 5: Dr Sun Yat-sen73Family homeWhile Sun himself had little contact with Macao after the revolu‑tion, it had great importance as the home of his family. In 1886, at the age of 20, he had an arranged marriage with Lu Muzhen, a lady from his native village. She bore him one son and two daughters. In 1913, she moved to Macao with their son and two daughters and his brother Sun Mei, who went into business and organised a fishermen’s association. He died in Macao in 1915. In 1903, Sun married a Japanese woman, Kaoru Otsuki, whom he met while living in Japan.In 1915, Sun married his secretary Soong Ching ‑ling, despite the strong opposition of his father and Lu’s pleas to accept Soong as a concu‑bine, rather than a wife, to save her status and reputation. As a Christian, Soong insisted that Sun could have only one wife and must divorce Lu as a condition for marrying her. At that time, many wealthy and prom‑inent Chinese kept concubines, often several of them; it was legal and socially accepted. After the marriage, Sun bought a house in Macao for Lu and the children. After his death, Lu continued to live in Macao with her three children and grandchildren. In 1930, an explosion at a nearby army munitions warehouse destroyed the house. Deeply embarrassed, the government provided money to build a new three ‑storey structure; this was supplemented by money from her son Sun Ke and Sun’s brother in Hawaii.With this capital, the family built the spacious three ‑storey structure that visitors find today. It is entirely Western, with wooden floors, large wooden furniture, and big wardrobes. The large bathroom has a flush toilet, a large bath, and green tiles. Visitors can see the furniture and surgical instruments Sun used. Surrounded by one ‑storey homes, it was the largest building in the neighbourhood in its time. It was a boisterous family home, ringing to the sound of grandchildren and their classmates. Lu was a devout Baptist and devoted much of her time to the church and charity. Sun Ke became a senior official in the Nationalist government and returned to Macao in 1947 to celebrate his mother’s 80th birthday. He later lived in France, the United States, and Taiwan, where he died in 1973.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city74Macao fulfilled an important role as a safe haven for Lu and her family. For Sun, it was a place where he could leave his first family, far from Beijing, Nanjing, and the other cities in China where he was fighting the revolution. Lu’s presence close to him would have been an embarrassment, and something which Soong would not have tolerated.In 1958, the building was restored and named the Sun Yat ‑sen Memorial House; it has since become one of the most popular places in Macao for visitors. In the courtyard is a full ‑length bronze statue of Sun cast by his Japanese friend Umeya Shokichi in 1934. It is one of four such statues; two are in Guangzhou and one in Nanjing. The building is owned by a Singapore ‑registered fund held by the authorities in Taiwan. The photographs evoke the memories of Sun’s extraordinary life, half Chinese and half Western – his itinerary across Asia, Europe and the United States in search of support and funds. They show the images of the new republic, with Sun and the other minis‑ters, full of hope and optimism. But warlords, factionalism, greed and foreign intervention prevented the growth of the modern, constitution‑al state which Sun envisaged. He died a disappointed man, his dreams unfulfilled.Macao remembers him also by naming a park, two roads, and a memorial hall after him. It has cast three statues of him, one of them in the courtyard of Kiang Wu Hospital. The park is one of 43 Sun Yat ‑sen parks in the world; it covers an area of 17.3 acres, making it the largest park in the city. More than 80 years after his death, Sun retains an enormous pres‑tige among Chinese, at home and abroad. He is one of the few political leaders respected by both the Communist and Nationalist parties and a symbol of unity between them. Both refer to him as “Guofu”, Father of the Nation. His odysseys around the world, his command of English and an intense curiosity enabled him to learn many of the best values of the countries he visited and incorporate them into the Three Principles of the People – his ideology to guide China. Sun often said that the Gettysburg Address of US President Abraham Lincoln extolling “gov‑ernment of the people, by the people, for the people” was the inspiration for this ideology. The three principles are nationalism, the people’s pow‑er and the people’s livelihood.

Chapter 5: Dr Sun Yat-sen75Remembering Dr SunIn 2011, the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai revolution, Macao organised many memorial activities to remember Dr Sun. They included a stage production, a concert, tours of sites connected with Dr Sun, a seminar attended by one of his granddaughters, and an exhibition in the Macao Museum. “No matter which angle they are viewed from, both Dr Sun Yat‑‑Sen and the 1911 revolution initiated by him appear to have a very close relationship with Macao,” read the introduction to the exhibition by Ung Vai Meng, then president of the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Macao. “It was from here that the young Sun embarked on his journey to the outside world. Macao was also the first place he began practising medicine in, and the very soil on which he developed his revolutionary ideas. Macao is regarded as the strategic base where he planned and organised the Chinese republic and sheltered when in danger. Hence, it can be said that Macao was the second home of Dr Sun Yat ‑sen and his family.”The exhibition contained a wide variety of items related to Dr Sun, borrowed from museums and private collections in Macao, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Taipei, and Hong Kong. They included letters, ar‑ticles, photographs, medals, souvenir porcelain, and a film about his life. Lilian Chan, a researcher at the museum and one of the team that created the exhibition, said that it took 12 months to prepare. “Our fo‑cus was on Dr Sun’s links to Macao. Many Chinese cities have held ex‑hibitions on him, so it was hard to find new material. Our idea was ‘let history talk, let the truth talk’.” Chan and her colleagues went to different cities in the Chinese world to seek exhibits. “Everyone was willing to donate. Many did not ask for a deposit – only the cost of transportation and insurance. Some museums demanded a small deposit to cover their administrative costs. The most difficult thing was to find items, especially new ones. Everyone was doing exhibitions, so it was hard to borrow. But, after a while, many local people came forward with offers to lend things. I was very moved. There were a lot of enthusiastic people. Museums in the mainland were very co ‑operative. Over half of the items in the exhibition had not been seen before. I thank the exhibitors and private collectors for their help.”

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city76Macao resources were also very important, including the Cultural Affairs Bureau (CAB), historical archives, the Central Library, the Civil and Municipal Affairs Bureau, the Kiang Wu Hospital, and private col‑lectors. “We found a lady of a hundred – Madame Chan Yuet ‑san, who lives in Macao and had met Dr Sun as a little girl in Kobe. Her father was a revolutionary who had gone there to support him.”Macao’s role in the revolutionLilian Chan said that Macao played a major role in the revolution. “It had a status that protected the revolutionaries – like a sanctuary. The governments of China and Guangdong used to ask the Macao gov‑ernment to arrest revolutionaries. The Macao government would then assign the task to their Chinese police. But these policemen had different attitudes. Some supported the revolution and others were afraid of those taking part in it. They did not do their best to search out revolutionaries, nor did they report the truth. In effect, they did not complete their job. This provided a space for the revolutionaries to hide. The Macao govern‑ment did not support the revolutionaries but turned a blind eye.“One beneficiary was Chen Jiong ‑ming. The government said that he was not here when he must have been. I am not sure how long he stayed.” A native of Haifeng in Guangdong, Chen was a lawyer and a mem‑ber of the Qing dynasty legislature who turned against the government. He later became commander of the Guangdong army and, after the rev‑olution, governor of the province.Sun’s clinic restoredIn November 2016, to mark Sun Yat ‑sen’s 150th anniversary, the CAB opened one of his two Macao clinics, which it had painstakingly restored. During his 16 months in Macao, after completing his medical studies in Hong Kong in 1892, Sun opened the two clinics where he treat‑ed patients with both Western and Chinese medicine.One of the two, restored to its original condition, opened to the public this November after five years of work. “It was one of the earliest

Chapter 5: Dr Sun Yat-sen77clinics in Macao opened by a Chinese that sold Western pharmaceuticals and served as a Western medical clinic,” says Deland Leong Wai Man, head of the CAB’s Department of Cultural Heritage. “It has great signif‑icance in the history of medicine in Macao. The clinic is also valuable as evidence of his life before his mission as a revolutionary.”The clinic is located at 80 Rua das Estalagens. Admission is free, and the restoration includes an exhibition of Sun’s life. The structure comprises 525 square metres of built ‑up area on 188 square metres of land. It was built prior to 1892 in a busy Chinese residential and business district. The clinic becomes the latest of several sites in the city officially connected with Sun.Overcoming many difficulties“The project cost MOP13 million,” said Leong. “The government acquired the site in 2011. Our principle in restoration is to use original materials, which were not easy to find.” The main challenge for the CAB was the condition of the original building which had deteriorated greatly in the 120 years since Sun’s de‑parture. It was re ‑purposed as a silk shop, then a retail store for electrical goods and finally a storehouse. “We had a lot of work to do,” said Leong. “First, we had to repair the roof, to stabilise the structure. Many of the bricks had crumbled.” This particular kind of old brick was no longer produced, so the CAB had to go to sites where old buildings were being demolished and salvage. It was a similar situation with the roof tiles. Skilled conserva‑tionists were also employed to repaint the interior in its original form. During renovation of the rear part of the building, a large amount of rough stone and silt was uncovered. After excavation, archaeologists de‑termined that these had been part of the earliest piers in Macao. This archaeological work caused a severe delay in the restoration. “The base of the structure was close to the water, so the foundation was weak,” said Leong. “So, we had to work there, to prevent salt from coming up through the walls and causing decay. The engineering work was very hard. It is a narrow structure, with buildings on each side and there is no side access,” she added.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city78Each floor of the clinic is composed of front and rear sections. A lift, toilet, and staircase in the rear section have been installed for the convenience of the public.The newly restored pharmacy is an important addition to Sun’s leg‑acy in Macao. It is another stop for those coming here to retrace the steps of the father of the Chinese revolution.SourcesDeland Leong Wai Man, head of Department of Cultural Heritage of the Cultural Affairs Bureau; Exhibition in Macao Museum on 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution, in 2011; Lilian Chan, researcher at the museum

Kou Ho ‑ningChapter 6

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city80

Chapter 6: Kou Ho-ning81From gambling boss to king of the pawnshop industryKou Ho ‑ning was one of the wealthiest and most prominent busi‑nessmen in Macao in the first half of the 20th century. With Fu Tak Iam, he controlled the Tai Heng company which held the gambling concession from 1937 to 1961. He ran a chain of pawnshops in Macao and Hong Kong and was called “King of the Pawnshop Industry”. He also managed opium parlours.After his death, the Macao government named a street after him, in recognition of his many contributions to charity. The Rua Comendador Kou Ho Neng is one of the few streets in Macao named after a Chinese. In Hong Kong, there is a primary school named after him. It belongs to the Tung Wah Hospital group and is located in the Kwai Ching district. He invested much of his money in property in Macao and Hong Kong and left his descendants a large fortune.Born into povertyKou was born in 1875 into a poor family in Shaxi township in Panyu in Guangdong province. At the age of five he lost his father and his family fell further into poverty. At seven, he entered a private school. But the family was so poor that he had to resort to begging and selling books to pay the school fees. Kou studied long enough to learn some Chinese characters. But the family ran out of money and he had to stop formal education. He took to selling fruit, fish, and shrimps and playing music on the streets to make money.At the age of 16, he left home for Hong Kong in search of work. He earned three dollars a month. After one year, he collected his mea‑gre savings and went to Nanhai county, where he opened a small store. Through smart management and hard work, the scale of the store grew. His business took him all over Guangdong as well as Hong and Macao. He observed that the entertainment business in Macao was the most profitable of all; with a small investment, you could make a large profit. So he sold his store in Nanhai and moved to Macao in 1911; he put all his money into a Fan Tan house under the name of “Companhia Tak Seng” in Rua de Caldeira. Again thanks to his good management and

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city82hard work, it flourished and became the best in the city. Things turned out as Kou had correctly predicted – he become wealthy from a modest investment. Then he used part of the money to invest into a new business – pawn ‑broking. Kou opened branches in Macao and Hong Kong and became known as the “the Pawnshop King”.In 1914, with nine other shareholders, he set up Sap Iau Tong. It was granted a licence for opium trade in Macao and started a firm called “Companhia Iau Seng” to run the business. This also flourished; he be‑came very wealthy. He set up the Tong An Shipping Company that served Macao, Hong Kong and ports in Guangdong province. He also established the Fu Heng banking house. He became the wealthiest man in Macao.Gambling concessionAfter 20 years in Macao, he knew that the biggest prize of all was the monopoly gambling concession from the colonial government. The first company to win this was Hou Heng, which won a six ‑year con‑cession in 1930 by agreeing to pay the government 1.4 million patacas a year. Kou set his sights on winning the concession when that of Hou Heng expired. He set up a new company, Tai Heng, with Fu Tak Iam, another professional in the gambling business. They successfully won the next contract, beginning in 1937, by outbidding Hou Heng and offering to pay the government an annual 1.8 million patacas; even better, the concession ran for 24 years. Kou’s money enabled Tai Heng to win the bidding; Fu was in charge of operating the casinos. It was an enormous bet by the two men. The Japanese military had occupied Manchuria and taken over areas of northern China; most people expected an all ‑out war. What would this mean for the country’s economy and supply of customers to Macao’s gaming tables? Did the Japanese intend to occupy Macao as well? If they did, they would surely take over the city’s most profitable business. Kou and Fu were willing to bet on the fact that the war would be far away and Macao would not fall so quickly. Their betting instinct proved to be extremely accurate and their gamble succeeded spectacularly.They used the six ‑storey Hotel Central in Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro as their headquarters. It was the only hotel in Macao with a lift.

Chapter 6: Kou Ho-ning83Three of the lower storeys were casinos. On the upper floors were tea houses, restaurants, a cinema, and entertainment of all kinds, in addition to hotel rooms. The company added new western forms of gambling, including blackjack and baccarat. The hotel was full seven days a week. To increase the floor area, Kou and Fu proposed the addition of five more storeys and to rename it “The New Hotel Central”. They invited a famous Hong Kong architect to design the extension. But the Macao government refused to approve the plan; it said it was too dangerous. Kou, Fu, and the architect did not accept this decision. They argued that they would use especially light materials for the extra floors; they took their case to a court in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, which ruled in their favour. This case only made the hotel more famous and attracted more visitors. (Note: please read Chapter 9 on Fu Tak Iam for more detail of the history of Tai Heng and Chapter 12 on Florence Li for more detail of World War II in Macao).WartimeIn 1937, Japan launched its all ‑out attack on China. By the end of 1938, it had captured the capital Nanjing, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and large parts of the south and east, including most of Guangdong prov‑ince. But the Japanese army had not touched Hong Kong or Macao; at that stage, it was unwilling to confront the two European colonial pow‑ers that controlled them. The people and governments of the two cities waited uneasily for the next move. Both knew they did not have the strength to resist the most powerful military machine in East Asia, and that their mother coun‑tries would not be able and not willing to send substantial reinforce‑ments. With Hitler’s invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, war had broken out in Europe. The governments of Britain and Portugal were fighting for their own survival. They had precious few resources to spare for small colonies on the other side of the world.Then, on 28 April 1940, a Japanese naval vessel full of armed sol‑diers pulled up at the port of Macao and the soldiers came on land. Everyone in the city held their breath, gripped by fear and anxiety. Was

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city84this the long ‑awaited invasion? Chinese shops and banks closed their doors. The Portuguese soldiers, with guns at the ready, stood guard to protect the city centre; they expected shooting to begin at any moment. Then the unexpected happened – the soldiers visited several shops to make purchases and Tai Heng’s Fan Tan parlours to have a look. Then they marched back to the port, boarded the ship and left. In December the following year, the Japanese military attacked Hong Kong, the British governor surrendering on Christmas Day. Macao became the only city in East Asia not under Japanese occupation. So it remained for the next three years and eight months. Why was this so?There are several possible explanations. One was that more than one million ethnic Japanese lived in Brazil, a former Portuguese colo‑ny. Brazil and Portugal enjoyed excellent relations at that time. Lisbon warned Tokyo that if it occupied Macao, those ethnic Japanese ran the risk of being expelled from the country where they had settled. Another explanation was financial. At that time, Japan faced an economic boycott by the US, Britain, and its allies; it could do no trade with them. How could it use the large amount of Hong Kong dollars it had acquired from its invasion of the British colony? By leaving Macao neutral, it meant that normal trade could be carried on there; so it could use its Hong Kong dollars to buy the strategic materials it needed for the war. A third factor was the same reason why Nazi Germany did not invade Portugal. Like Macao, the country contained no essential raw materials or factories, which Adolf Hitler needed for the war effort. But what Germany needed was a neutral country where it could conduct trade and gather intelligence on its enemies and which could serve as a place for secret negotiations with them, if needed. This is indeed what happened in Macao in 1940. Japan’s all ‑out military attack on China was successful in conquering enormous areas of territory and installing a puppet government in Nanjing led by Wang Jing ‑wei, in addition to the “Manchukuo” government in the three prov‑inces of the Northeast. But the Nationalist government of President Chiang Kai ‑shek had not surrendered; it moved its capital to the southwestern city of Chongqing and continued to resist. This was not the plan of the military

Chapter 6: Kou Ho-ning85strategists in Tokyo who wanted a peace settlement that would enable them to move men, machinery, and aircraft to other theatres of war. Instead, they had millions of men and material tied down in China at enormous cost. They needed an agreement with Chiang that would end the war in China. In March 1940, Japanese intelligence held secret talks in Hong Kong with a representative of Dai Li, chief of Chiang’s secret po‑lice. They had four days of meetings and decided to hold the next round in Macao, which they considered a safer place.These were held on 6 June 1940 in Macao. They took place in a remote area of the city with very few people in an underground room of an empty building. On the Chinese side were three representatives, two senior military officers from Chongqing and one from the secret police. On the Japanese side, there were also three representatives, also very senior, one from military headquarters in Tokyo and two from the army occupying China, plus a translator. They took a passenger boat to Macao and, to avoid attention, stayed in different hotels. The three rounds of talks began at 21:00 and lasted until the early hours of next morning. The first thing the six had to do was prove to the other that they were who they said they were. The Japanese used code words only known to those involved in the talks. The Chinese side produced a secret document signed by President Chiang himself, which authorised them to conduct the talks and, in his words, “resolve matters between China and Japan.” During the talks, the Chinese side agreed in principle to sign with Japan a “Sino ‑Japanese anti ‑Communist agreement”. But they said that it was impossible for them to recognise the puppet state of Manchukuo and the Japanese army occupying China. After three days that ran around the clock, the talks concluded. Both sides agreed to continue them later. But, for many reasons, this never happened – and Japan’s plan to end the war resulted in failure.CharityThe fall of Hong Kong in December 1941 resulted in a crisis in Macao. The population tripled to more than 450,000, the largest in its history, as thousands of refugees poured in from Hong Kong and the mainland to escape the Japanese occupation.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city86In the chapters on Florence Li and Fu Tak Iam, we describe in detail what happened during this traumatic period. One of Kou’s main roles during the war was as a philanthropist. The government and civil society mobilised their resources to help the refugees. On the Chinese side, the two main institutions involved in this relief work were Kiang Wu Hospital and Tong Sin Tong, a charity set up in 1892. One of Macao’s wealthiest people, Kou had been closely involved with both, as a donor and a director. Never in the city’s history had the two institutions been more important. There was a shortage of food; on the black market, food prices rocketed. People could not afford to eat rice – but only congee, a combination of water and mixed grains. They ate whatever they could find, including the millet which the Japanese army fed to their horses. Each day a large queue formed outside the Tong Sin Tong head‑quarters, in the hope of being fed. Faced with this crisis, together with other wealthy businessmen, Kou donated generously, to buy food, winter clothes and medicines for the refugees. Kou went to the dis‑tribution place in person to inspect the congee himself. He dipped a pair of chopsticks into the large barrels. If the chopsticks rested on the surface, that meant the congee was thick enough and fit to eat. But, if the chopsticks dropped to the bottom, that meant it was too thin and lacked nutrition. “How can this congee cure hunger?” Kou said. A photograph of the period shows him testing the congee; he is wearing a white shirt and a straw hat. In 1941, he founded the pharmacy of Tong Sin Tong and donated one of his properties as its premises. He served on the board of Kiang Wu Hospital, Tong Sin Tong and the Macao Red Cross and gave large sums to all three; he also served as chairman of the Macao Chinese Chamber of Commerce. He also donated to disaster relief on the mainland and set up schools there.His generosity during the war was one reason he was widely hon‑oured after it. During his life, he received four awards, the most of any Chinese in Macao. On 15 September 1951 he received a medal from the Portuguese Red Cross and on 28 June 1952, he received a national medal from the Portuguese government.

Chapter 6: Kou Ho-ning87King of pawnshopsKou had three principal businesses – opium, the gambling con‑cession, and pawnshops. The one for which he was most famous was the third – he was known in Macao and Hong Kong as the “King of Pawnshops.” His company was Tak Seng On, which he opened in 1917; it became the largest in the city, a few doors down Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro from the Central Hotel. It boasted an eight ‑storey granite ware‑house full of gold, jewellery and precious stones. Kou expanded the busi‑ness into a chain of pawnshops in both Macao and Hong Kong. Pawnshops have a 450 ‑year history in Macao. During the 80 years from the end of the Qing dynasty until the 1960s, they performed an invaluable role – a “bank” for the poor and middle class and a place for the rich to store their valuables.Banks were only for the government, large businesses and the rich.“In those days, the pawnshop played an important role in the econ‑omy. There were no banks and no deposit boxes. The wealthy left their goods here for safety reasons.  People trusted and respected pawnshops,” said Leung Wa, the senior cashier of Tak Seng On when it closed in 1993. The building has now become a museum; visitors can listen to a record‑ing of an interview with Leung. At their peak, the pawnshops, numbering nearly 100, were concentrated in the city’s main commercial district, like the banks of today.“Now they have moved to the area close to the casinos. There are no traditional pawnshops anymore,” said Leung. “One thing I can never for‑get is people bringing their children to the shop. In those days, the quality of medical care was poor and parents feared their children would not grow up strong and healthy. They had a superstitious belief about pawn‑shops. We would allow the child to enter and walk around, enabling the shop to rub off on him and give him health and riches in the future. Then the parents would give us a red packet (with money inside it) to thank us.” Leung and his colleagues handled all kinds of goods. The poor brought whatever they had – jackets, coats, clothes, shoes, blankets, leather bags, sewing machines, and work tools. They could leave them for a maximum of six months, with a one ‑month extension. If they did not claim them, they were taken to second ‑hand shops and sold.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city88In December 1903, the government of Macao issued regulations to standardise the pawnshop industry. They divided them into three catego‑ries – Tong, On, and Ngat. The Tong made the longest contracts, of up to three years, and charged the lowest interest. The On made contracts of up to two years, with a higher rate, and the Ngat made short ‑term contracts, with the highest rate.World War II was a boom period for the industry. The population tripled to 450,000, with a flood of refugees from the mainland and Hong Kong. Everything was in shortage and the cost of basic commodities soared; people needed pawnshops to borrow money as they had nowhere else to go. There were no other financial institutions to serve them. Tens of thousands were refugees from their homes. They did not have access to family, relatives, and traditional networks to which they would normally have turned to borrow money.A job in a pawnshop in Macao was highly desirable and only open to those with a good recommendation. Those who managed to get in worked there for their whole lives. On the mainland, pawnshops had a history of more than 1,500 years. They were places where people could bring all kinds of goods to pawn and receive money in return. The shops charged a rate of interest and gave customers a fixed period in which to reclaim the item. If they returned within the period, they paid back the original amount, plus the interest, and took back the item. If they did not return in time, they forfeited the pawned item, which the shop then sold to others.The profession required those who worked in it to have an intimate knowledge of the goods they traded: in a matter of seconds, the cashier had to assess the worth of the item in front of him and what it would fetch on the second ‑hand market. He would also need to bargain with the customers to get a good price. The staff of the pawnshops needed years of experience before they were given the job of cashier. The responsibility of bargaining with customers and assessing the value of the goods they were being offered required a great deal of training. In Macao, the first record of a pawnshop appears in 1557, soon after the arrival of the Portuguese. It served officials, soldiers, and ordinary people.The style and design of the pawnshops mirrored those on the main‑land. In Tak Seng On, the counter was positioned high up, above the height of the tallest customer. This was to ensure that he had to look up

Chapter 6: Kou Ho-ning89to the cashier and feel inferior; it put the cashier in a stronger bargaining position, so he could push the price down. The customer could not see the measuring instrument on the cash‑ier’s desk. The red screen in front of the shop counter hid the customer from the street, so that passers ‑by could not see him. To visit a pawnshop was a sign of debt and shame; you did not want others to know. The counter was equipped with a magnifying glass, which the cash‑ier used to examine watches, jewellery, jade, and other precious items and assess their value. He also had an instrument to measure diamonds. The counter had a register to record each item handed in, along with the date, the owner’s name, and the amount paid for it. The customer received a pawn ticket, on which this information was recorded. Then a junior member of staff wrapped the item in brown paper and a piece of string, with the information on its contents attached. On the wall was a notice warning staff not to buy goods for themselves; the penalty was dismissal. The risk of this kind of “insider trading” was too high.Only members of the public with business to do in the shop were al‑lowed in, for security reasons; a door with steel bars blocked their entry. The only exceptions were wealthy customers allowed to enter and given a seat next to the cashier. They could sit at the same height as him, a sign of their higher status. The rich were a different kind of client. They did not use the pawnshop because they needed money but as a place to store val‑uables. They considered the monthly interest worth paying, compared to the risk of keeping the goods at home, where they might be stolen. Today they would leave the same items in the safety deposit box of a bank.At the back of the shop, separated by a narrow alley, was the eight‑‑storey warehouse in which the goods were stored. These were among the sturdiest buildings in the city, built to withstand fire, flooding, and theft. They were built with granite foundations, thick brick walls and steel plates. Each floor had granite casements and four narrow slit win‑dows. On the ground floor were safes, which contained precious items like gold and jewellery. Less valuable goods were stored in wooden racks, neatly wrapped and labelled. Junior staff ate and slept in the pawnshop and rarely went out, thereby deterring robbers who wanted to steal the treasures in the warehouse. Monthly interest rates went as high as 11 per cent, depending on the item and the client.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city90For many Chinese, the most memorable account of a pawnshop comes in a short story Call to Arms published in 1923 by Lu Xun, one of the country’s most famous novelists in the first half of the 20th century. Since his father is gravely ill, the author is forced to pawn many of the family’s possessions to buy medicines. “At the pawnshop, the counter was twice as high as me. I handed over clothes and jewellery and bor‑rowed money with a sense of humiliation. Then I went to the pharmacy and bought medicines at a counter which was the same height as me, for my father who had been sick for a long time.”Many people despised pawnshops for taking advantage of the poor and taking goods off them at knock ‑down prices. The high counter was a symbol of this inequality between cashier and vendor, of the wealth of the pawnbroker and the poverty of his customers. For its part, the new Communist government after 1949 regarded the shops as “exploiting the people” and closed down the industry.Outside the mainland, the pawnbroking industry declined for other reasons: the establishment of a modern banking sector that served a wide public and not only the rich; the widespread use of credit cards; and the provision of welfare by the government. These factors replaced many of the functions of pawnshops.In Macao, one after another closed down, including Tak Seng On, in 1993. Those that remain, clustered around the city’s casinos, perform a more limited role – providing instant credit to gamblers who run out of cash. In 2000, the owners of the Tak Seng On building wanted to sell it. Unwilling to see this important part of the city’s history disappear, the government stepped in and spent 1.4 million patacas to restore it to its former glory. It opened officially as a museum on 21 March 2003 and is now visited by 5,000 people each month. The Macao pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 included a replica of the Tak Seng On – a sign of its valued place in the collective memory.The ones which remain in Macao today mostly offer short ‑term contracts with high interest rates; they are concentrated in the streets close to the major casinos. Their main customers are gamblers who need money quickly and pawn watches, jewellery, earrings, branded pens and other high ‑value items. Some are open 24 hours a day, to provide the best service to all ‑night gamblers. The variety of goods they accept is limited

Chapter 6: Kou Ho-ning91– no clothes, furniture, or household items as in the past. They only want goods for which there is a ready second ‑hand market. Some have a sister shop in Hong Kong, where clients can redeem their item after pawning it in Macao.Home in MacaoIn 1916, Kou bought an elegant three ‑storey mansion at 165, Rua do Campo in the downtown area. He used it as his main family residence, doing alterations to make it a home with Chinese and Western styles. When a US film company came to film exteriors in Macao for Soldier of Fortune, Clark Gable stayed in a second ‑storey guest room. Now the building is a preserved historic monument; but it is not open to the pub‑lic. It is an excellent example of the mixture of Western and Chinese ar‑chitecture that is characteristic of Macao. It is no more than five minutes’ walk from Senado Square in the centre of the city.It is included in the “Footprints of Chinese Merchants” historic walk, which is sponsored, by the Department of Cultural Activities and Recreation of the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau.DiversificationLike his partner Fu Tak Iam, Kou invested his money in different sectors and outside Macao. He went into property and shipping. In 1939, he bought a building in the Wanchai district of Hong Kong. After the end of World War II, he bought other properties in the Central and Wanchai districts of Hong Kong.He died in 1955 at his home in Hong Kong, at the age of 77. After his death, two of his sons took over management of the substantial fam‑ily assets.SourcesRevealing 500 years of Macao, by the Information Division of Asia Television, published by Asia Television and Ming Pao; Stories of Old Macao, edited by Li Fu ‑lin, published by Macao Sungshan Studies Publishing House.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city92

Lou Lim IeocChapter 7

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city94

Chapter 7: Lou Lim Ieoc95Garden memorialises entrepreneur and philanthropistIt is just before six o’clock in the morning and still dark – but a small crowd of elderly people gather at the gate of Macao’s most famous garden. As the doors swing open, they walk in, line up in an orderly rank and begin their morning exercises. Welcome to Lou Lim Ieoc Park, the only garden in Hong Kong and Macao built in the Suzhou style, an extravagance of trees, ponds, pavilions, rock sculptures, and small walkways. It is an oasis of tranquillity in a forest of soaring apartment buildings and the incessant drone of cars and scooters.Lou Lim Ieoc was the eldest son of Lou Kau (see Chapter 2) and the man who inherited his father’s business empire and the leadership of the family after his death in November 1906. The young man was just 28. He eagerly took on his father’s mantle, continuing to run the gambling and opium operations in Macao and branching out into a theatre, silver, pharmaceuticals, and pawn ‑broking. Lou Lim Ieoc maintained his father’s legacy as a public figure and representative of the Chinese community. Also a major philanthropist, he gave generously to Kiang Wu Hospital, where he served as chairman for four years. He set up a Confucian school to provide education to the poor at primary and secondary levels and served as its chairman. Like his father, he received awards from the Chinese and Portuguese governments. His scholarship and accomplishments exceeded those of his father. His greatest legacy to the city is the Lou Lim Ieoc garden. This was an area of vegetable patches which his father had bought in 1870. He commissioned a well ‑known Hong Kong architectural firm to turn it into the city’s only Suzhou ‑style garden. It is the largest and best used area of green space in the city’s downtown; it is also the largest private garden and the most spectacular. Construction began in 1904 and was complet‑ed only in 1925. It contained the Lou family home.The most famous meeting in the park was in May 1912; it was the first visit of Dr Sun Yat ‑sen to Macao after the Xinhai Revolution in October the previous year. Dr Sun had just stepped down from the post of President of the Republic of China after only three months in office, having been forced out by military warlord Yuan Shi ‑kai. It was a grave disappointment to Dr Sun himself and those hoping for a new republican

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city96state. Lou Lim Ieoc and his brother were close to Dr Sun and had sup‑ported him during his revolutionary struggle.Lou Lim Ieoc died on 17 June 1927, aged 49. More than 1,000 people attended the funeral; he was buried in the White Cloud Cemetery in Guangzhou.Early life Lou Lim Ieoc was born in 1878 in Xinhui, his father’s hometown in Guangdong province. He was the eldest of the 17 sons Lou Kao had with his 10 wives and concubines. He attended a private school there. After graduation, he moved to Macao to work in his father’s business.After his father’s death, he took over the gambling and opium operations and diversified into many sectors of the economy. Lou Lim Ieoc became a major shareholder of Nanyang Tobacco Company and of the Bao Xiang Bank. His business interests also included a pharmacy, a pawn ‑broking shop and the Qing Ping Theatre. He was involved in land development; in 1918 and 1925, he rented two areas of waste ground far from the populated areas and developed them. In 1911, he was one of the seven founders of the Macao Chamber of Commerce; in 1913, he became its chairman. In 1913, he founded a newspaper Macao Tongbao (Macao Journal), which sold in Hong Kong and Guangdong province, as well as in Macao. It carried news from all three places as well as from Beijing and Shanghai, including stories on different forms of gambling, such as horse racing and “white pigeon”. It also had columns and editorials.The colonial government regarded him, like his father, as a repre‑sentative of the Chinese community. He served in the colony’s legislative assembly. In 1923, the government set up a committee to advise it on policies concerning the Chinese population and Lou Lim Ieoc was one of the members. He had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. They in‑cluded not only officials of the Macao government but also people from different circles in Shanghai and Hong Kong as well as Macao. He built on the success of his father, expanding and broadening the scope of busi‑ness, and he had a range of contacts unmatched by anyone in Macao.

Chapter 7: Lou Lim Ieoc97Sun Yat ‑senLou Lim Ieoc was a supporter of Dr Sun Yat ‑sen and his revolution. When Dr Sun visited Macao in 1912 and 1913, Lou received him at his private home in the park. The first visit was especially poignant. After the success of the Xinhai Revolution in October 1911, Dr Sun had been elected the first President of the Republic of China on 29 December 1911. Both he and his Prime Minister, Tang Shao ‑yi, were natives of Xiangshan (now Zhongshan), the county in Guangdong that borders Macao. But he remained in office only three months. In April, he was forced to resign in favour of Yuan Shi ‑kai, the warlord who controlled the Beiyang Army, the strongest military force in China at that time. The new government did not have any military of its own. The resignation was a severe setback to Sun personally and the hopes of everyone who wanted to build a new republic. Yuan was a warlord, who would declare himself emperor in 1916. In May, Sun went to Hong Kong and later Macao. There is a fa‑mous photograph of his visit to the Lou home; it hangs in one of the buildings in the gardens today. Sun was encouraged to meet so many supporters in the two places; they gave him the strength to carry on with his struggle to implement the revolution he had envisaged. Lou Lim Ieoc also knew many of Sun’s revolutionary comrades.One of his brothers, Lou I Ieoc, was even more involved in the rev‑olution. In 1901, when Dr Sun was working as a doctor at the Kiang Wu Hospital in Macao, Lou met him and was influenced by him. In 1902, Lou Lim Ieoc went to Japan to study; there he decided to commit himself to the revolutionary cause. In 1906, to continue his studies, he went to Britain. After returning to Macao, he took part in activities of Sun’s Tongmenghui party. He strongly encouraged people to cut their pigtails; this was a symbol of loyalty to the Qing government, which required all males to wear one. He organised a mass cutting of pigtails at the Qing Ping Theatre, which was owned by the Lou family. On the streets of Macao, he handed out revolutionary tracts. His ac‑tivities attracted the wrath of the Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, who issued an arrest warrant for him. His service was recognised after the success of the revolution. In 1915, he was selected as a representative

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city98to the second national assembly of the new government. He was active in charity in Macao, including activities to reduce the rate of mortality among women and new ‑born babies.PhilanthropyLike his father, Lou Lim Ieoc was an active philanthropist. With several partners, he founded the Macao Confucian School; it accepted children from poor families. He drew up its articles of operation and served as principal; it produced a large number of talented people. He was manager of Kiang Wu Hospital in four different years – 1913, 1919, 1921, and 1923. He also donated money for famine relief in Guangdong province. In 1913, he set up an organisation to run schools for poor chil‑dren in his hometown. He received awards from the Qing government as well as two from the Portuguese government, in 1913 and 1925, for his charity work. In 1915, he was honoured by China’s then President Li Yuan ‑hong for his contributions to charity.DeathLou Lim Ieoc’s death came early and unexpectedly. In June 1927, en route to Hong Kong, he fell ill because of the high temperature. He returned to Macao for treatment in hospital, but in vain and died on 17 June 1927, aged only 49. Flags in Macao were flown at half ‑mast. His funeral was a major affair, attended by more than 1,000 people, including the Governor of Macao and his wife and many other digni‑taries. The cortege followed the body to the pier, where it was taken by ship down the Pearl River to the White Cloud cemetery in Guangzhou where he was buried next to other members of his family. A wealthy Guangzhou businessman, who was a close friend of the family, paid for the building of an elaborate tomb, which is now a cultural site protected by the Guangzhou city government. Lou Lim Ieoc left a large family. According to one account, he had nine wives and concubines and eight sons. But his family members did not have his business acumen nor network of contacts. Three years after his death, the family lost the gambling franchise and went into decline.

Chapter 7: Lou Lim Ieoc99Other Chinese businessmen replaced the Lou family as leaders of the community and as intermediaries with the colonial government.Garden – work of two decadesThe garden that bears his name was built on land originally used for growing vegetables in a village called Longtian. Lou Kao acquired it in 1870 as a private garden. Later, Lou Lim Ieoc invited Liu Ji ‑liu and Liu Xianlian, two architect ‑scholars from Xiangshan (now Zhongshan), to design a garden in the style of those in Suzhou; he called it Yu Yuan (Yu Garden). Building began in 1904 and was completed officially in 1925. The Lou family spared no expense. It is the largest private garden constructed in Macao, and the most spectacular. The garden was called both “Lou’s Garden” and “Ninth Lou’s garden”. Inside the garden were two build‑ings. One was a single ‑storey residence for the Lou family, the other what is now the Iong Sam Tong pavilion.It was based on the 200 private gardens built by mostly scholars in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, between the 11th and 19th century. The design features are constructed landscapes that copy natural scenery of rocks, hills, and rivers with carefully placed pavilions and pagodas. UNESCO has listed them as a World Heritage site, calling them “the most refined form of garden art”, with elegant and subtle aesthetics. The result is the opposite of the sweeping lawns and neat flower beds preferred by the rich and nobility of Europe – a maze of narrow paths, giant weeping willows, elegant pavilions, lotus ponds and, everywhere you look, rock sculptures.“Chinese people like stones and trees,” said Wong Lam ‑ming, a schoolteacher who often visits. “This is their idea of beauty. The park is well used today. Its size nowadays is half of what it used to be when the Lou family lived here.” Visitors gain a sense of the past from visiting the Iong Sam Tong pavilion close to the entrance. This was built as a spacious room for the Lou family to receive visitors in and now houses an excellent collection of 290 family items donated to the government in 2009; they once belonged to Lou I Ieoc, a younger brother of Lou Lim Ieoc.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city100For Dr Sun Yat ‑sen’s 1912 visit to the park, the Lou family invited more than 100 of Sun’s Chinese and Portuguese friends, including the Governor and religious leaders; he thanked the brothers for their sup‑port. There is a photograph in the pavilion of this meeting as well as a phonograph with a recording of the voice of Dr Sun.During the anti ‑Japanese war of 1937–1945, the Pui Ching school evacuated from Guangzhou to Macao. It rented the pavilion as a library and held classes in the garden. After the end of the war, the school returned to Guangzhou and part of the park was used by a primary and secondary school. In 1952, Ho Yin, one of Macao’s most prominent citizens, acquired the park and allowed two middle schools to continue to use parts of it. In 1972, he donated the park – or sold it at a low price – to the government. Half of the park was given to the Macao Pui Ching school, whose buildings and exercise grounds are now on the other side of the fence; the other middle school moved to a different site.On 28 September 1974, the government opened it to the public; at 1.78 hectares, it was less than half the size of the original Yu Yuan. It was decided the park would be named after Lou Lim Ieoc, because of his many contributions to Macao society. In 1992, it was selected as one of the eight major attractions of Macao. The Iong Sam Tong pavilion was used as a classroom by the Leng Nam Primary School; later, it was turned into the flora and fauna specimen room of Leal Senado and the offices and warehouses of government departments. In 2010, the government did large ‑scale reconstruction of the pavil‑ion to restore it to its original form. It now houses the permanent exhi‑bition of the life of the Lou family. In one corner of the garden is the Tea Culture Museum of Macao; boasting an area of 1,076 square metres, it is the first museum in the SAR devoted to tea.Popular siteThe garden is very popular with the residents of Macao. As the sun rises, so the park fills with people. Some perform Tai Qi and others follow exercises led by a teacher. Some drink tea from tiny cups from pots they bring themselves and others swing the cages of their birds to

Chapter 7: Lou Lim Ieoc101give them the morning air. By nine o’clock, the atmosphere fills with the sound of Cantonese opera from two of the pavilions.“The park is very popular with the residents of the area, especially those who are retired,” said Leung Yung ‑sing, eating a bun on a brief stop on his way to work at a nearby shop. “They use it to exercise, to sing, to knit and to relax. How different it is from when it was first built, for just a single family.” He was sitting in front of a one ‑storey house painted in yellow with classical columns that used to be the home of the Lou family after whom the park is named. It has wooden floors and, at the front, a long wooden corridor which looks over a large pond. That is where, a century ago, the members of the Lou family used to sit during the long summer evenings and survey their large domain. In those days, there were no high ‑rise buildings to block the view nor the noise of motor cars – only the clip‑‑clop of horses’ hooves on the paving stones and the breathing of the rickshaw boys as they pulled their wealthy clients.  One photograph in the pavilion captures Lou Lim Ieoc at the height of his fame in Macao. It is 1925; in the garden he is receiving awards in recognition of his contributions to society. He is seated in the middle of a gathering of more than 100 people, including the Governor, reli‑gious leaders, and the other most important citizens of the colony; both Portuguese and Chinese. Everyone is dressed in their best outfits. Lou Lim Ieoc is proud and happy.He died in 1927 and the family lost the gambling franchise three years later. His fortune began to decline. In the park today, only the name and the objects in the pavilion remind people of the wealth and fame of the Lou family. Their house has become a site for exhibitions. Teacher Wong described the feelings of most Chinese people with the popular saying: “Wealth does not survive three generations.”SourcesBiography of Lou Lim Ieoc on website of Guangzhou city government; Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau, SAR government, November 2010, Department of Cultural Activities and Recreation; Lou Lim Ieoc biography by Baidu; Lou Lim Ieoc Garden and the Lou Family, by Zheng De ‑hui and Peng Hai ‑ling

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city102

Leung Yan ‑mingChapter 8

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city104

Chapter 8: Leung Yan-ming105Pioneer teacher assassinated for work against JapanLeung Yan ‑ming was a pioneer of modern education in Macao, a political activist and leader of the anti ‑Japanese movement during World War II. It was for that reason that he was shot to death close to his school on Christmas Eve, 1942, probably by Japanese agents.He is remembered today as a hero of the anti ‑Japanese war as well as someone who developed education for primary and secondary stu‑dents and for the ordinary public. He was also an accomplished poet and calligrapher. He devoted 33 years of his life to education in Macao. Early lifeLeung was born in 1885 in Xinhui, Guangdong province and studied at the Nanhai Model School and the Guangdong High ‑Level Normal College, two of the leading educational institutions in Guangzhou at that time.It was a period of revolutionary ferment, in which the Cantonese played a leading role. One of the areas of greatest change was education. Reformers wanted to introduce the teaching of maths, science, geogra‑phy, and other modern subjects to replace the learning of Chinese classics that had been the basis of education for many centuries.In 1905, the Qing dynasty abolished the imperial examination sys‑tem that relied on knowledge of Chinese classics and literary style. The abolition led to a search for a new form of education to equip young people for the modern world. The young Leung was swept up in this movement and wanted to make his own contribution to improving the schooling of China’s children.In 1909, his father Leung Tai ‑cho decided to move the whole family from Guangzhou to Macao. That year the young Leung set up a new school on the second floor of a downtown building; he called it Sun Sat (崇實學校), meaning “respect” and “honesty”.In 1910, through the introduction of two members, he joined the Tongmenghui, a revolutionary party led by Dr Sun Yat ‑sen that was the forerunner of the Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party. It was founded in August 1905 in Tokyo by Sun and his associates as a secret society and un‑derground resistance movement that aimed to overthrow the Qing dynasty.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city106In April 1911, with other members of Tongmenghui, Leung organ‑ised the cutting of pigtails in the school. Under the Qing government, all men had to wear a pigtail. To remove it was a sign of disloyalty – pop‑ular among revolutionaries; it could lead to a severe punishment. Many of those who had cut theirs off kept a spare to use on official occasions.In October that year, a military uprising in Wuhan set off the Xinhai Revolution and the overthrow of the Qing dynasty. Leung did what he could to assist in the uprisings that culminated in the end of imperial rule.Growing the schoolUnder his leadership, his school developed rapidly; it came to of‑fer classes from primary to early middle school. He built a three ‑storey apartment building for the faculty and students in Nan Wan area. It be‑came one of the best ‑known schools in the city.Leung set up Boy Scouts and prepared the students for education in the mainland. He always wanted the children to keep pace with what was happening in the rest of China and not be an isolated outpost on a corner of the southeast. To this end, he added military training in the middle school. In Guangzhou, he ordered a batch of fake rifles for the training, which he planned to give to the students to practise with. But the Portuguese government was strongly opposed, because it did not allow military training outside its control. Leung was forced to drop the plan – but more than 100 of the rifles were stored on shelves on both sides of the school’s main assembly hall. The school became famous for the rifles.In 1920, he and a group of associates founded the Macao branch of the China Education Association (CEA), to promote the unity and development of teaching in the city. It is the oldest institution in the city dedicated to education and culture. That year Leung and his associates founded a free school to provide education to ordinary people. In 1927, he founded a second one, Kiangwu Free School. Both aimed to reach ordinary people who had not had the opportunity to receive education.Leung worked in education in the city for more than 30 years and did much to promote it; many of the graduates of his school played prominent roles in the life of Macao.

Chapter 8: Leung Yan-ming107PoliticsFor Leung, his teaching and political work were part of the same struggle, to strengthen and modernise China. In 1915, he joined with others to organise an association “to boy‑cott Japanese goods and save the nation”. This was in protest against the Twenty ‑One Demands made in January that year by Tokyo against the four ‑year ‑old government of the Republic of China. They would have greatly extended Japanese control of Manchuria and the Chinese economy.China’s people responded with a nationwide boycott of Japanese goods; its exports to China fell 40 per cent. Pressure from Britain and the United States forced Tokyo to drop one set of the demands; but on 25 May 1915, it signed a treaty with Beijing which gave it many of the demands. On holidays, Leung organised students and faculty to go to places near the school and take part in activities to promote the boycott.In 1921, he and other members of the CEA met Dr Sun Yat ‑sen in Guangzhou; Dr Sun encouraged them to bring together all sectors of Macao society and promote patriotic businesses.In 1922, Leung led a demonstration of more than 3,000 teach‑ers and students to protest against the nation’s shame at the hands of the Japanese and other foreign powers and call for national revival. In 1925, he chaired a meeting of 20,000 in a ceremony to mourn the death of Dr Sun.He played a prominent role in the work of the Kuomintang branch in the city, serving as a member of its standing committee and attending meetings as a deputy of its Zhongshan and Guangdong branches. He also served as vice chairman of Kiangwu Hospital, a senior official of the city charity Tong Sin Tong, and a committee member of the China Education Association.Fighting JapanAfter Japan launched its all ‑out war against China in July 1937, Leung threw himself in the struggle. He strongly promoted the boycott of Japanese goods; his students carried copper coins to put into a collection box in each class to raise money for the war effort. He raised funds to

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city108treat KMT soldiers wounded and handicapped in the war, especially the Songhu campaign of 1937.Fought in and around Shanghai between August and November 1937, this was one of the biggest battles of World War II. A total of 250,000 Chinese and 40,000 Japanese were killed. Historians have called it the “Stalingrad on the Yangtze”.Leung campaigned passionately to raise public awareness about the war. His prominence in the anti ‑Japanese movement brought him to the attention of its spies in Macao; he received death threats.His importance increased after the Japanese captured Hong Kong in December 1941. The government concentrated its overseas Chinese work in Macao, the only place in east Asia not under Japanese control. Leung worked clandestinely to monitor the activities of Japan and its collaborators and reported them to the government in Chongqing, where it had moved the capital after the fall of Nanjing in 1937.The Japanese decided that Leung was too dangerous and decided to assassinate him. This was carried out on Christmas Eve of 1942. As he was walking back to his school in the evening, an agent shot him dead. He was 57. His funeral was attended by more than 1,000 people. The en‑tourage went past the Japanese consulate, where the mourners expressed their anger and protest.That same month, Lin Zhuo ‑fu, leader of the Kuomintang in Hong Kong and Macao aas well as the principal of Zhongshan Middle School, was also shot to death.Nobody was arrested for either murder. It is widely believed that the assassins were agents of Tokyo who killed them for their anti ‑Japanese activities. The Portuguese government in Macao did not dare to confront Japan and therefore did not conduct a vigorous investigation. It was try‑ing to maintain neutrality in the war.After Leung’s death, the central government in Chongqing sent a telegram praising him as “First among Overseas Chinese to die for their country in Macao”. On 29 March 1942, it designated him as a martyr. In September 1945, after the end of the war, a collection of his works was published in Macao. He was an accomplished poet and callig‑rapher. In 1927, in association with friends, he had established a poetry society, which published the works.

Chapter 8: Leung Yan-ming109Under a new principal, his school continued to operate until 1961.On 3 September 2014, officials of the Macao Education Bureau held a meeting with teachers and students to remember those in the city who had given their lives during the anti ‑Japanese war. This is what the official record of the meeting said about Leung:“Chairman of the Macao China Education Association and prin‑cipal of the Sun Sat Middle School, Leung Yan ‑ming eagerly promoted among teachers and students the campaign against Japan and in favour of patriotism from the time of the 4 May movement in 1919. For more than 10 years, he resolutely led the work against Japan. On 24 December 1942, he was assassinated in Macao by Japanese collaborators. He was a fearless martyr.”SourcesOld Stories of Macao, edited by Li Fu ‑lin, published by Macao Songshan Study Publishing Company, March 2009

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city110

Fu Tak IamChapter 9

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city112

Chapter 9: Fu Tak Iam113Action ‑packed life of casino mogulFu Tak Iam was one of the early casino moguls in Macao. His com‑pany held the gambling concession from 1937 to 1961. The year after his death in 1960, his heirs bid for the right to continue, but the colonial government decided to award it to a new consortium led by Stanley Ho. The concession over 24 years had enabled his family to become very wealthy; they invested in real estate, shipping, trading, and other sectors in Hong Kong and Macao and remain rich today. Fu gave away a lot of money to good causes. In 2007, his grandson Adrian Fu set up a foundation named after him to continue his grandfather’s legacy of philanthropy.Fu himself had a life worthy of a Hollywood film. He was born in 1894 to a poor family in Nanhai county in Guangdong. Fleeing a drought, he went with his father to Hong Kong, where he worked in the naval industry. From an early age, he was interested in gambling and gambled reg‑ularly. He served 10 months in prison in Hong Kong after getting into a fight. On returning to Guangdong province he started his career in the gambling business. Then he joined forces with Kou Ho ‑ning (see Chapter 6), one of Macao’s richest businessmen, to form a company named Tai Heng. It won the gambling concession in January 1937 and held it for the next 24 years.During World War II, Macao was the only city in East Asia not under Japanese occupation. Business at the hotels and casinos controlled by Tai Heng boomed because they attracted wealthy and well ‑connected Japanese, Chinese, and foreigners who had few places to spend their money. After World War II, a Guangdong High Court condemned Fu to death for collaborating with the Japanese during World War II. During the Chinese civil war, he appealed to another court, which found him innocent. To ensure that the judgement would be well known in Macao and Hong Kong, he placed advertisements in the local media with the new verdict. On 10 February 1945, Fu was kidnapped while going for an opium smoke at one of Macao’s temples. A huge sum was paid after his family received part of one of his ears from his captors.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city114Fu invested the large profits from the gambling industry in real estate, entertainment, shipping, construction, cinemas, and trading in Macao and Hong Kong. In 1950, he sent some of his children to Hong Kong to run his businesses there. In 1952, he purchased the land in Central that was later the site of the Furama Hotel, which became a landmark overlooking Victoria Harbour. Fu ecame a person of power and wealth, living in a large house close to that of the Governor. He and his partner Kou Ho ‑ning were among the richest men in Macao and Hong Kong. Both had long ‑term friends and relationships with the governments in Macao and Portugal and their companies employed thousands of people in the city.He was an honorary advisor to the Macao Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Kiang Wu Hospital and Tong Sin Tong and a major con‑tributor to charitable causes in Macao. He also made donations to pro‑jects in his native village in Guangdong.Fu died in Hong Kong in November 1960, at the age of 66. He left 16 sons and daughters. Kou Ho ‑ning, the other main shareholder in the Tai Heng company had died five years before. The deaths of the two main shareholders of Tai Heng made it easier for the colonial govern‑ment to award the gambling concession to a rival firm.Early lifeFu was born in 1894 into a poor family in Biyun village, Xiqiao, Guangdong province. His first job was cutting grass on the hills around his native village. Then he boiled peanuts in salted water and sold them on the streets of Guangzhou. With the money earned from this, he set up a company that made small loans to people. Later in life, he returned to his native village to show his affection for its people. In 1927, he built a big garden there to honour his ances‑tors. After 1945, he built there a memorial for the 800 villagers who died in the war with Japan. In the 1950s, he built there an Overseas Chinese Middle School.At the age of 19, Fu fled a drought at home and went to Hong Kong in search of work. He did odd jobs and worked as an apprentice in a ship machine shop. After an argument with another man, he was arrested by

Chapter 9: Fu Tak Iam115the police and sentenced to ten months in prison. Upon release, he did business in Guangxi and Guangdong and, through this, came to know many officials and wealthy people. Through this, he made his first for‑tune. This provided the money for him to return to Hong Kong and enjoy high ‑class restaurants and night clubs.In 1930, he tried to win the gambling concession in Macao but was defeated by a company named Hou Heng, run by a group of investors. In exchange for an annual payment of 1.4 million patacas, the government gave Hou Heng a monopoly concession to operate all commercial gam‑ing in Macao; it was the first firm to be awarded this right. Its main casino and hotel was located in the President Hotel on Avenue Almeida Ribeiro, in the centre of downtown. This had opened in July 1928 and was the first hotel in the city equipped with an elevator. It had six storeys and was the highest building in Macao. In 1932, the com‑pany introduced greyhound racing to the city. One of the investors was Fok Chi Ting, a wealthy gambling magnate from Guangdong province; he was also president of the Guangdong Bank and founder of the Kang Nian Bank of Hong Kong. Although Fu was a competitor, Fok liked the young man. The two men went into business together and set up casinos in Guangzhou and Shenzhen in 1935. Business was so good that gambling revenues in Macao, not far from Shenzhen, began to fall. Fu kept his eye on gambling in Macao, where revenue was larger than in cities in the mainland; he aimed to bid for the concession when the franchise of Hou Heng ran out at the end of 1936. He sold his casino in Shenzhen and took the money to Macao. Realising that he needed a powerful partner he chose Kou Ho ‑ning, one of the richest men in Macao and someone active in the gaming industry for more than 30 years, espe‑cially in Fan tan; Kou also ran a large pawn ‑broking operation. The two men set up the Tai Heng Company and bid for the conces‑sion, offering the government an annual payment of 1.8 million patacas. It decided to accept the offer and not renew the franchise of Hou Heng. Tai Heng took over in January 1937; it had the concession for gambling and lotteries. Since it had lost, Hou Heng no longer wanted the President Hotel and sold it to Tai Heng. The new owners renamed it the Central Hotel. They opened what they called the “Tai Heng

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city116Lady Escort and Entertainment Complex”, with a casino and other forms of entertainment. They introduced many new Western types of table games, including Baccarat, which is by far the most popular game today. They remodelled and redecorated the casinos and offered free Chinese opera shows, as well as free drinks, fruit, cigarettes, and snacks. The hotel included restaurants and dance floors as well as casinos. If requested by its customers, it bought boat tickets for them to return to Hong Kong and cities in the mainland. It was Kou Ho ‑ning who supplied the capital, while Fu ran the operations. In addition, Tai Heng had two other casinos and ran several different kinds of betting at other venues in the city.The company was helped by the decision of the Nationalist gov‑ernment in the mainland to ban gambling nationwide in 1938. This made Macao and Hong Kong the only cities in China where gambling was legal.In March 1941, a rival hotel opened that aimed to compete with the Central. This was the nine ‑storey Grand Hotel, a joint investment by the President of Bank of Canton, Fok Bo Choi, and his cousin Ng Ting Wai. It had a Western restaurant and a bar on the first floor, a dance hall on the second floor and a Chinese restaurant on the third floor; hotel rooms oc‑cupied the rest of the floors. It was the tallest hotel in Macao and offered the most innovative designs and modern facilities. Not to be outdone, Tai Heng invested more money and added five floors to the Central Hotel, raising the number to 11 and making it taller than the Grand.War – curse and blessingIn December 1941, the Japanese military captured Hong Kong from the British. They could have occupied Macao without difficulty but decided not to. This left it the only city in East Asia that was not under Japanese control. This had a dramatic effect on the city, for the good and the bad.Macao became a haven for thousands of refugees, from Hong Kong and the mainland, who wanted to live outside the control of the Japanese military.

Chapter 9: Fu Tak Iam117It was the worst humanitarian crisis Macao ever endured, with tens of thousands of refugees putting a terrible strain on the enclave’s resourc‑es and the benevolence of its people and its charitable institutions.Providing basic sustenance, clothing and shelter for such vast num‑bers of desperate and needy people was a huge task. It is estimated that Macao’s population swelled from 150,000 to almost half a million. Food was the greatest need, especially after Japan mounted a sea blockade making overland routes from the mainland the only source of supply.Despite the valiant efforts of welfare groups and religious volun‑teers, starvation and disease took a drastic toll. An estimated 50,000 people died, many of their bodies lying in the street. At its nadir, Health Department workers were picking up as many as 400 corpses a day and dumping them in a mass grave in Taipa.Boom for Tai HengBut what was a curse for the city as a whole was a blessing for Tai Heng and those involved in the hotel, restaurant, and entertainment in‑dustries. Since it was the only place in southern China not at war, its res‑taurants, casinos, opium dens, and brothels boomed; they attracted those who were profiting from the war, such as gangsters, Japanese soldiers, and officials and businessmen who worked with them. The greatest single beneficiary was Tai Heng’s Central Hotel. Its casinos, upmarket bars, dance floors, and restaurants were patronised by wealthy refugees, military officers, civil servants, and businessmen who profited from the war. Their clientele also included wealthy people from Macao; Hong Kong; the mainland; Portuguese from other cities in Asia; and overseas Chinese and Japanese business people, officials, and mili‑tary officers. For those with money to spend, there was little else to do and no‑where else to go in the city. To go to Hong Kong, the mainland or else‑where was out of the question. While the clients enjoyed themselves in the hotel, the hungry lay dead at the front door. During the war, like other wealthy people, Fu donated money to help the poor.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city118A large amount of gold, silver, platinum, and foreign currency flowed into the colony. As part of the war, Japan attacked the Chinese government by economic means in an effort to force it to surrender. To this aim, Japanese firms set up nearly 50 joint ventures with Hong Kong and Macao business‑men to flood the Chinese market with Japanese goods, drain the country of foreign currency and buy raw materials needed for the war effort. Many of these firms had offices in Macao and employed local business people. Senior officials of the colonial government held shares in some of them.There is little public information available about Fu’s business op‑erations during World War II. Like Portugal in Europe, Macao operated in a “grey” area. While it was not occupied by the Japanese, their secret police, the Kenpeitai, had an office there that was active. It published pro ‑Japanese newspapers and organised assassinations of leading anti‑‑Japanese figures.Japanese military and civilian officers could enter Macao easily. They were important clients at Tai Heng’s casinos and other betting out‑lets, as were Chinese and Macao business people working with them. What was “collaboration” and what was legitimate business? Who was working for who? At the same time, consulates of Western countries at war with Japan remained opened in Macao during World War II; nation‑als of these countries were able to take refuge there. From there, some escaped to Free China and joined the war effort. After World War II, many countries in Europe and Asia that had been occupied faced the same dilemma of how to come to terms with their wartime past. The occupation had divided families, villages, and many parts of society. Many chose to remain silent; examining the past too closely would open scars and enmity that would take decades to heal.Guangdong court condemns Fu to death Following the war, a High Court in Guangdong province con‑demned Fu to death for collaborating with the Japanese during the con‑flict. During the Chinese civil war, he appealed to another court, which found him innocent. To ensure that the judgement became well known in Macao and Hong Kong, he placed advertisements in the local media with the new verdict.

Chapter 9: Fu Tak Iam119KidnappingFu smoked opium; he used to go for a smoke at a temple in the city. On 10 February 1945, he was resting at the Kun Iam temple when gangsters burst in and kidnapped him. They chose the time and place well; at that moment, he did not have his normal bodyguards nor protection with him. The temple was open, with easy access to members of the public. The kidnappers demanded ransom of nine million patacas.This was a very serious matter for the colonial government. Fu was one of the wealthiest and most important people in the city. It asked Ho Yin, the most prominent Chinese in Macao, to act as inter‑mediary. He managed to persuade the kidnappers to lower their ran‑som demand to 500,000 patacas. But, the night before the exchange was to take place, Fu’s son found out the site where his father was being held and informed the police. At once they went there – but found it empty. The kidnappers had been tipped off. Enraged, they cut off part of Fu’s right ear and sent it to his family as a warning. They returned to their original demand of nine million patacas. There was more mediation, this time by Xin Ma Shi Zeng, a famous Cantonese opera star, and the figure decreased again to 500,000 patacas. The family paid this amount and the kidnappers released Fu. Later the po‑lice arrested Lei Peng Su, a former soldier with the Nationalist Army, and charged him with the kidnapping. A court sentenced him to 18 years in prison.Back to businessUndeterred by this, Fu went back to business. He invested in Tak Kee Shipping and Trading Co, which built Quay 16 in 1948. That year, the Tai Loy boat began serving the Macao ‑Hong Kong route from the quay; Fu planned it as the most modern boat on the route. In addition, he owned apartment blocks on the Praia Grande and four trading ves‑sels going between Macao and ports in the Pearl River Delta.Business boomed after 1949, when the new PRC government declared all forms of gambling illegal. Fu used the profits to set up

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city120several companies; they invested in entertainment, shipping, construc‑tion, property, cinemas, and trading in Macao and Hong Kong. The new government in Beijing banned its citizens from going to Macao to gamble; Hong Kong became the most important market for the casinos.Fu diversified his investments into Hong Kong, perhaps as a result of the kidnapping. In 1950, he sent some of his children there to run his businesses there. In 1952, he purchased the land in Central that was later the site of the Furama Hotel. In 1956, he also bought the Swire Pacific Bank Far East Building. A person of power and wealth, Fu lived in a large house in Macao close to that of the Governor, with two large green doors and a big gar‑den; it contained two tablets devoted to his father and mother. In the two decades before their deaths, he and his partner Kou Ho ‑ning were among the richest men in Macao and Hong Kong. Both had long ‑term friends and relationships with the governments in Macao and Portugal and their companies employed thousands of people in the city.PhilanthropyFu was also a philanthropist. He was an honorary advisor to the Macao Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Kiang Wu Hospital and Tong Sin Tong. He was a major contributor to charitable causes, build‑ing schools and doing poverty relief in the mainland and donating mon‑ey to Kiang Wu, Tong Sin Tong, and other good causes in Macao. In 1927, he built a big garden in his native village to honour his ancestors. In 1945, he built a memorial there for the 800 villagers who had died in the war in Japan. In the 1950s, he built there an Overseas Chinese Middle School.Losing the concessionTai Heng’s concession expired on 31 December 1961. The colo‑nial government put it up for tender through open public bidding. Fu’s children put in a tender. Its competitor was a new company Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau (STDM), founded by Ip Hon, Teddy Yip, Stanley Ho Hon San, and Henry Fok.

Chapter 9: Fu Tak Iam121The governor Jaime Silvario Marques took the decision to award the concession not to the Fu family but to the new competitor. There were several reasons for his decision. One was that STDM promised to make investments in Macao outside its casino, including in infrastruc‑ture, a new ferry service to Hong Kong, and charity. Another was that the Fu family had not invested as much of its profits in Macao as the government had wished. A third was that Stanley Ho, one of the mem‑bers of STDM, was married to Clementina Angela Leitao, a Portuguese and the daughter of Dr Carlos de Melo Leitao, an eminent lawyer and public notary; he had lived in the city for many years and had excellent connections with successive Portuguese administrations. A fourth rea‑son was that both Fu and Kou had died. Their children did not have the influence and connections of their fathers.“Fu is a famous man in Macao history,” said David Leung, a retired civil servant. “We do not say we respect him, as we do not say we respect Stanley Ho. He was a person of power and wealth. There are no statues of him in Macao, while Kou has one in Tong Sin Tong. On the other hand, we respect Ho Yin. He did much for Macao and left a legacy.”Move to Hong KongAfter losing the concession, the Fu family moved to Hong Kong and managed its properties and other businesses there. In 1973, his eldest son opened the 33 ‑storey Furama Hotel in Central; it had a pan‑oramic view over the harbour it listed on the stock market in 1985. Fu Tak Iam FoundationIn 2007, his grandson Adrian H.C. Fu set up a foundation named after Fu Tak Iam. This followed the passing of his father Fu Yum Chiu, Fu’s eldest son. Educated in the UK and USA, Adrian Fu is chief exec‑utive of KHI Holdings Group, a Hong Kong ‑based family office that manages a global real estate portfolio and other diversified invest‑ments. He was a trustee of World Wild Life Hong Kong between 2000 and 2012.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city122This is how Adrian Fu described the establishment of the foundation.“My father Fu Yum Chiu (Y.C. Fu) passed away in December 2005. Apart from substantial personal assets, he left behind bundles of old letters and memorabilia which he had collected over several decades. Through going over this assortment of letters and old pictures I was able to slowly piece together his early adult life.“In 1946, he was sent to Hong Kong (from Macao) by my grand‑father Fu Tak Iam to set up a HK office. Initially the main enterprise was shipping, though later he was commissioned to acquire properties and listed shares. My grandfather would write to him on a weekly basis with very precise instructions on how best to structure these transactions. This went on for the next 10 years and a portfolio of assets was accumulated.“As the eldest son, my father was at the same time charged with the responsibility of looking after his siblings who were sent abroad to further their education. His father was his mentor and superior until his passing in 1960, whereupon my father assumed the role of guardian of the family assets. This was to continue until such time that his younger brothers and son were ready to join him in the family business, a course my grandfather had so meticulously charted.“The purpose of this Foundation is to continue the good work of the patriarch of the family who had created the Legacy, and the preserver who religiously nurtured the plans to fruition. It is also my belief that the Foundation shall be the most meaningful interpretation of my father’s love and respect for my grandfather and an effective tool to communicate our family history to future generations.”The foundation continues the philanthropy of Fu’s grandfather. It operates by way of endowment fund in perpetuity and through a pro‑fessional seven ‑member board with different skills. They are support‑ed by a grant allocation committee, an investment committee, along with an audit committee. Each year, the Foundation gives donations to non ‑profits to support impactful projects in Hong Kong, China, and

Chapter 9: Fu Tak Iam123Macao. “These have not only brought long ‑term benefits and hope to deprived people with different needs, but also helped improve the qual‑ity of living of the society as a whole. The Foundation values good practices in terms of impact evaluation, sound management and inno‑vation,” it said on its website.It lists projects under social welfare, emergency relief, education, med‑ical and public health, animal welfare, and environment and conservation.Sources Article by Andreia Sofia Silva in Hoje Macau, Casino Industry in Asia Pacific; Development, Operation, and Impact by Kaye Sung Chon, Cathy Hc Hsu, Portuguese Studies Review, Vol. 16, No. 1, edited by PSR (Standard Issue); Website of Fu Tak Iam Foundation; Portuguese Studies Review, Vol. 16, No. 1, edited by PSR (Standard Issue)

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Wong Man ‑datand Lo Sai ‑dong Chapter 10

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city126

Chapter 10: Wong Man-dat and Lo Sai-dong127Pioneers of photography in MacauWong Man ‑dat was the first Chinese professional photographer in Macao. In the 1930s, he opened a three ‑storey studio in the centre of the city and was a pioneer in developing the art and popularising it among the public. He had a great influence on the profession.In later life, he devoted himself to writing and working in education for ordinary people.“Wong Man ‑dat was a person of many arts and talents,” said Lee Yu ‑tin, one of his pupils who has worked as a photographer in Macao for more than 70 years. “He liked to develop new technologies. It was from him I learnt the power and attraction of photography.”Another pioneer was Lo Sai ‑dong. He lived in Macao for only four years, between 1948 and 1952, before going to set up a studio in Mozambique, at the invitation of the then Governor. But he too had a large impact, using new techniques and bringing photographs to a wide public.Today photographs are part of daily life. Mobile phones enable us to take images at any time and send them to friends and family.But it was a different world in the 1930s. Photography was a hobby of the rich – and, in Macao, the Portuguese community which had the money and leisure to engage in it. For the vast majority of Chinese, it was something out of their experience. Early lifeWong was born in Macao in 1901 into a family that originally came from Quanzhou in Fujian. The family came to Macao during the Kang Xi reign (1661 ‑1722) of the Qing dynasty, making him the seventh gen‑eration in the city.His grandfather was a wealthy man who reclaimed land in the Inner Harbour to construct the Rua da Felicadade; he also built the Qing Ping Theatre and donated generously to its city’s temples.Wong was a single child; his father did business in Hong Kong and his mother was a native of Macao. He received his early education in Macao at a private school and then studied at Son Sat Primary School. After his mother died, he moved with his father to Hong Kong to live and

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city128studied at the elite Wah Yan College when he learnt English. He sat the examination for Hong Kong University.But after his father died he was unable to continue his studies. He went with a cousin to Southeast Asia, working in the family food busi‑ness in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur before returning to Macao. During those years, photography was his major interest outside work. After re‑turning to Macao, he went into this business full ‑time and, with a friend, set up a photographic shop.Then, together with his wife, he found a three ‑storey building in Avenida De Almeida Ribeiro and opened the “Modern Photograph Shop”. On the ground floor was the retail shop, on the second, a dark room and work space. On the third floor was a studio for portraits. He was in charge of the photographic work and his wife in charge of the dark room, the washing and printing. The main source of business was portraits. Interior lighting was not so developed in those days; so, in his studio, Wong used natural light through a glass ceiling.In the 1930s, photography was, for the majority of Macao people, something unknown. The city was poor, with a living standard below that of Hong Kong and Guangzhou. There were established commer‑cial photographic studios in major cities like Shanghai, Tianjin, Ningpo, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong but not Macao.Photography had arrived in China with the foreigners after the Opium Wars and was slowly accepted by Chinese society. This was ac‑celerated by the development of newspapers, which used photos. Portrait photography become popular.Many of Wong’s early clients were dancing girls and prostitutes who came to have their portrait taken; they wanted to show a positive image of themselves.Wong was innovative and creative. At that time, photography was entirely black and white. He started to use chemicals to introduce col‑ours, such as blue, green, and red.He used four different colours for a set of four prints of Nam Wan called “Sunrise”, “Noon”, “Afternoon” and “Moonlight”. He entered them in Macao’s first photographic competition at the city government and won the top prize.

Chapter 10: Wong Man-dat and Lo Sai-dong129When the city government organised a second competition, it did not publicise it because it wanted to prevent Chinese from taking part. When Wong found out, he had to fight to participate and eventually was accepted. He entered a “24 ‑hour photo”, with a map of Macao in the centre and famous scenes from the city around it; it was very innovative.A Portuguese obtained the top prize and Wong came second. The Secretariat for Economic Co ‑ordination published the map. Wong took pictures of the main scenes of the city, such as St Paul’s, the Guia Lighthouse, and the Border Gate. He put them in the window of his shop where many admired it. The Portuguese were jealous of his success.Second pioneerAnother pioneer of photography in Macao was Lo Sai ‑dong. A na‑tive of Guangzhou, he went to Tokyo in the 1930s to study photography at a professional academy devoted to it. He was one of the few people in the mainland to conduct such studies overseas. After his return home, the Sino ‑Japanese war had broken out. Thus, Lo and his family moved to Saigon in the south of Vietnam where they opened a Chinese restaurant. After the victory over Japan, they returned to Guangzhou, where Lo opened a photographic studio. But the civil war broke out between the Nationalist government and the Communists. So, in 1948, he and his wife moved to Macao, where they opened a studio in the centre of the city. Lo brought with him all the technology he had learnt in Tokyo and introduced it to Macao.To attract business, he created the city’s largest photograph, of the Capela de Nossa Senhora da Penha church. It was 40 inches high and 60 inches wide. When he put it in the front of his shop it created a sen‑sation and thousands came to see it, including the Governor. Business was booming.He was the first photographer in Macao to use the Crown Graphic camera. His studio was the most advanced in the city in its use of colour lantern slides. Each year he held a beauty contest and took photographs of the contestants. This attracted many customers.Lo was also a pioneer in the use of Ektachrome and “particle devel‑opment”. He knew many writers and artists, who visited him in Macao.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city130He helped them to arrange exhibitions there. In 1952, he accepted the invitation of the Governor to set up a pho‑tographic studio in Lourenco Marques, capital of the then Portuguese colony of Mozambique, to train local people in his profession. He did not return to Macao.Although he lived in the city for only four years, his flair and crea‑tivity had a big impact.These two men – Wong and Lo – were the fathers of photography in Macao.

Xian XinghaiChapter 11

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Chapter 11: Xian Xinghai133Son of boatman in Macao becomes famous national composerHe was born in a boat in Macao harbour and his mother earned a meagre living ferrying goods from Macao to Zhuhai. He overcame poverty and prejudice to study music in Paris and wrote the most famous piece of Chinese music during the Pacific War.Xian Xinghai lived a short but dramatic life, dying of pulmonary disease in a Moscow hospital in October 1945 at the age of 40. During his brief life, he wrote two symphonies, a violin concerto, an opera, and nearly 300 songs, including his masterpiece the Yellow River Cantata in 1938; it became the battle hymn of China during the war with Japan and has had a lasting impact on modern Chinese music.He is well remembered in Macao. The Avenida Xian Xing Hai named after him runs through the Nape district, next to the city’s Cultural Centre. The Cultural Affairs Bureau (CAB) is converting two houses next to government ‑owned broadcaster RTM in Rua de Francisco Xavier Pereira into a museum in memory of Xian. One will contain the history of his life and achievements; the other will show the history of China during his lifetime as well as Macao’s history from 1937 to 1945. CAB expects the museum to be completed in 2018 or 2019. In addition, the city’s Post Office has issued stamps in Xian’s honour.In total, Xian composed over 300 works, published 35 papers and had an enormous impact on Chinese music. Since his death, his works have been widely performed in China and, in recent years, in the West. In Guangzhou, the Xinghai Conservatory of Music and the Xinghai Concert Hall are named after him. In Panyu, a suburb of Guangzhou, there is a park named after him. Like Macao, Alma ‑Ata (modern ‑day Almaty) in Kazakhstan has a Xian Xinghai street. Films have been made about him, one a joint production between China and Kazakhstan.Early lifeXian was born on 13 June 1905 into a family of boat people in the inner harbour of Macao. His father died before he was born, in a boat‑ing accident in Hong Kong. Xian was born in the small boat that dou‑bled up as the family home; he lived there with his mother and maternal

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city134grandfather. His mother earned a pittance from carrying food and daily necessities on the boat from Macao over the short distance across the water to the mainland city of Zhuhai. Boat people were at the bottom of the social ladder. When the young boy went to school, he was thrown out because they did not want such low ‑class people among them. Xian learned Chinese characters from his mother who drew them in the sand on the beach. She sang fishermen’s songs; it was the start of his musical education. He used to deliver food to the homes of wealthy Portuguese and heard Western music for the first time. Then his grandfather died in a collision which destroyed the family boat, leaving the family with no adult male.Mother and son moved to Singapore, where she found work as a domestic servant and lived in the house of her employer. Through a rel‑ative, they got an introduction to a school for overseas Chinese. With good teachers, Xian learned Mandarin and music. He completed primary school and two years of middle school, before moving to a middle school in Guangzhou that was part of Lingnan University. His teachers saw his talent in music; it became his favourite subject. In 1918, he started learn‑ing the clarinet at the YMCA school attached to the university.Studying music in Beijing, Shanghai, and ParisIn 1926, he moved to Beijing to study music at the National Music Institute at Beijing University; but it was later closed by a local warlord. So he moved in 1928 to the Shanghai Music College, to study violin and piano, only to find himself expelled for taking part in a student move‑ment. He looked elsewhere for a place to continue his music education and chose Paris, even though he did not have the money for the sea voy‑age, let alone the tuition fees.Relatives helped him to get a job on a steamer bound for France in 1929; he worked in the engine room, shovelling coal, to pay his passage. Once he reached Paris, he earned a living from working in Chinese res‑taurants and, in doing so, learnt French. His poverty and itinerant life had made him strong and independ‑ent. A Chinese student there introduced him to music teachers who

Chapter 11: Xian Xinghai135taught him free of charge because they recognised his unusual talent. He was greatly helped by a Parisian girlfriend who taught him French, invited him to her house for meals and was very good to him. He began to compose music. In 1931, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatory with a schol‑arship to study composition with Vincent D’Indy and Paul Dukas, two of the most distinguished teachers of the time. During these years, his mother waited patiently for him to return by continuing work as a do‑mestic servant in Macao, Guangzhou, and Shanghai. He did not consider staying in Europe; he wanted to go back to China, to be re ‑united with his mother and work for the mainland. He always said that his most im‑portant teacher in life was his mother.In 1935, Xian did return to China. He found an excellent job as the director of the music department at a film company in Shanghai, then the largest and most important city in the Far East and home to Asia’s biggest film industry. Suddenly, he had a good salary and a lifestyle that he could never have imagined – a large house in the French Concession and, for the first time, his own piano. It took time to track down his mother but when he did she came to live with him. The life of wealth and comfort did not last long, however. In July 1937, the Japanese army began its full ‑scale invasion of China and soon occupied Shanghai – though not yet the French Concession. Xian played an active role in propaganda work against Japan and wrote anti‑‑Japanese songs. Fearful of being arrested, he fled to the central city of Wuhan in Hubei province, where he met Zhou Enlai, one of the leaders of the Communist Party. Zhou invited him to go to Yanan, the moun‑tain base of the party in Shaanxi province. Xian agreed; his mother remained in Shanghai.Fired by patriotismIn Yanan, he worked in the music department at the Lu Xun Academy of Arts and Literature, for a nominal income. In November 1938, he married Qian Yun ‑ling in Yanan; they had a daughter named Nina. The time in Yanan was a very productive period for him in terms of compositions, including the Yellow River Cantata. It was inspired by

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city136a poem written by Guang Weiran, a friend of Xian who had been to the front line and done propaganda work to support Communist troops fighting the Japanese. In early 1939, Guang was wounded and taken to Yanan for treat‑ment. Xian visited his friend in hospital; despite his wounds, he com‑posed the poem, which took him five days to complete. Xian wrote it down and, from 26 March, started to compose music for the poem. After six days and six nights of intense work in a cave in Yanan, between 26‑‑31 March, he completed the score. It was first performed on 13 April at a school in northern Shaanxi, jointly by the orchestra of the Lu Xun Academy and military guerrilla band. Mao Zedong first heard it on 11 May and invited Xian for a meeting. Shortly afterward, Xian was ap‑pointed head of the music department at the academy. The song was recorded very quickly and became the most popular song of the war, like a national anthem against the Japanese. It was sung by soldiers as they walked to the front, students in their assemblies, and overseas Chinese meeting to support the mother country. It was a very difficult time for Chinese and they needed psychological support, said Xu Xin, a researcher at the Museum of Macao who wrote the script for a film about the composer.The next stop of his odyssey was Moscow. The Communist Party had made a film on the Eighth Route Army and needed music. There were no facilities for this in Yanan, so Xian took the reel to Moscow to add the music, accompanied by a member of the Yanan film company. He arrived in Moscow at the end of 1940 and stayed in the Number Three International Guesthouse, on 36 Gorky Street, as the guest of the Comintern. He borrowed a piano and work on music for the film. He started to learn Russian and became friends with Russian composers.On 22 June 1941, the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union and nearly captured Moscow. Xian became one of the millions of victims of this brutal conflict of World War II. Without fluent Russian, he could not take part in the war effort and decided to go home. He started the long journey back but found the border had been closed by a warlord in Xinjiang. He lost the film reel. He ended up in Almaty, capital of the Soviet Kazakh republic and took refuge there. It was close to the frontier with China.

Chapter 11: Xian Xinghai137His life in Almaty was very hard. He lived for one year in the base‑ment of a five ‑storey building and survived on the limited rations given to residents during wartime. He had no family or connections there. One day in June 1942, after a chance meeting, a Russian musician invited him to his home and then arranged for Xian to stay in the apartment of his elder sister, where conditions were better.In the autumn of 1943, as the bitter winter began to take hold, Xian lost the daily ration of 600 grammes of bread; this was the most difficult period of the war, when everything was in shortage. His physical condition began to deteriorate. Sometimes fellow musicians invited him to their homes for a treat of several slices of bread, hot soup, and a bowl of corn; then he could take a nap in front of the fire.Despite these privations, he attended concerts, maintained contact with fellow musicians, and composed new pieces, including two sym‑phonies and two suites for wind and strings. In early 1944, he went to Kostanay in the north of the Kazakh republic, where he organised a band that played in local venues; it was well received. But the bitter winter, hard work and malnutrition took a toll on his health. He lived on his own, with no ‑one to take care of him, scraping a living, and eating mea‑gre rations.In the spring of 1945, during a visit to a mountainous region for performances, Xian caught pneumonia. Because of his poor diet and living conditions, his health deteriorated. Despite this, he continued to compose music. It took three months to arrange a transfer to a high ‑class hospital in Moscow; it was close to the Kremlin and used by senior party officials. He was only able to go after the end of World War II in Europe, in May 1945. The treatment came too late to save his life. He died of pulmonary disease in the hospital on 30 October 1945. After going to Moscow in 1940, he never returned to China and never saw his mother, wife, and daughter again. He lived the last five years of his life alone.In the southwest of Almaty is a street named after him and a plaque and statue in his memory, with writing in Chinese, Russian, and Kazakh. After his death, he was buried in a public ceremony on the outskirts of Moscow. In 1983, at the request of his family, his ashes were taken back to China and buried in his ancestral town in Guangzhou.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city138Memories of Moscow and Almaty Zuo Zhenguan, a Russian of Chinese origin, is the leading scholar on Xian Xinghai in Russia and Kazakhstan; the composer lived in both countries. He is an enthusiastic campaigner for a major museum to Xian in Guangzhou. “In Russian cities, there are many museums dedicated to nota‑ble people who were born and grew up in them. Xian is the pride of Guangzhou. How should he be best remembered? The local government should provide a piece of land and build a museum in his honour, he said. It could draw on foreign examples and incorporate Xian’s music into the construction. “What is patriotism? It means knowing your own history. But many Chinese do not know their own history and do not know Xian Xinghai nor the Yellow River Cantata. That is very sad,” said Zuo.During the Cultural Revolution, Zuo left Shanghai with his Russian mother and settled in what was then the Soviet Union; he has lived there since. After studying music at university, he entered the Russian Music Composers’ Association (RMCA). At the end of the 1980s, the Chinese Foreign Ministry sent a letter to the Soviet government with ten ques‑tions about Xian’s life there. The RMCA entrusted Zuo with the task of answering the questions. So he followed Xian’s path to Almaty and Kostanay in Kazakhstan.Xian went there in the summer of 1941, after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Its army nearly captured Moscow. With millions of others, Xian fled to the east and took refuge in Almaty, then capital of the Soviet Kazakh republic and now the largest city in Kazakhstan. In Almaty, Zuo found people who had known Xian, including the elderly woman who had put him up in her apartment. She told him how he had sold his clothes to raise money and about the illness that developed into pulmonary tuberculosis. Zuo said that, over the years, he had helped producers who were making films about Xian. “I feel that it is very strange that there is not a proper official research institution that conducts in ‑depth research on him. Xian was not just a composer but a person of great significance to Socialism in China. For a person of his stature, there should be at least in

Chapter 11: Xian Xinghai139Guangzhou a large ‑scale and authoritative museum, showing the history of his life and his compositions. There are many aspects about him that are worth researching,” Zuo said.Remembered in filmXian’s life inspired a young student in Beijing, Xu Xin, to make a film about him. The Young Xinghai premiered in Macao in December 2009. The idea of making the film first came first to Xu in 1966; he was a student at the Beijing Film Academy, whose vice ‑principal was a famous film ‑maker named Wu Yinxian. During the Cultural Revolution, Wu was fired from his job and sent to shovel coal. In an interview in 2010, Xu, a researcher at the Museum of Macao, said: “I went to see him at his home and he was delighted to have a visitor. He recounted how he had known Xian Xinghai. Wu and Xian had worked together in the film industry in Shanghai and went together to Yanan.” Wu described to Xu an evening in Yanan when Chairman Mao in‑vited him and Xian to dinner; it was after Xian had written the Yellow River Cantata, which had made him famous. “Mao asked him who was the teacher that had enlightened him. He said it was his mother. Wu said that this left a deep impression on him. I always remembered that. I heard his music and liked it a great deal, as everyone did in the mainland. He represented an era,” said Xu. “The Yellow River Cantata was sung by soldiers as they walked to the front, students in their assemblies and overseas Chinese meeting to support the mother country. It was a very difficult time for Chinese and they needed psychological support.”In 1982, Xu moved from Beijing to Macao and became a reporter at the newspaper Va Kio Journal; he used to interview fishermen in the Inner Harbour, where Xian was born. “When I talked to them, the idea of a film came to my mind. In 2004, I proposed it to Mr Li Qiankuan, chairman of the China Film Association, who knew Xian’s history and was very excited. Li decided to direct the film himself with his wife Xiao Guiyun.”It involved an investment of 18 million yuan, of which the Macao Foundation provided the major part, 10 million patacas. Five companies participated in the production. The film covered Xian’s childhood years

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city140in Macao and Singapore. Xu wrote a second and third one, covering the years in France and Shanghai, and Yanan and the Soviet Union respec‑tively. The production company chose to make the film not in Cantonese, the native language of Xian and his mother, but Mandarin, because the market for the film was in the mainland.For the cast, Li looked all over China for six months. More than 500 children auditioned for the part of Xian as a young boy. Li chose Su Jiahang from Beijing; he was gifted at singing and swimming as well as good ‑looking. For Xian’s years in Singapore, he chose a teenager from Xian. For the mother, he chose a Taiwanese actress, Vivian Hsu. Their aim was to finish it by 2009, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC and the 10th anniversary of Macao’s return to China.The team shot the film in Macao, Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Guangzhou and the Nanhai film city. They cut it in Macao in mid ‑June 2009 and had it ready by the end of the year. “The hardest thing was to recre‑ate the conditions of a fishermen’s village 100 years ago, which we did in Hengqin (in Zhuhai),” said Xu. The music for the film was written by composer Nan Shu who worked with the Macao Youth Symphony Orchestra. A resident of Beijing, he also composed the music for Building the Nation, a film made by the Central Government to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the PRC.“Macao had a profound impact on Xian,” Xu said. “It is there he learned fishermen’s songs from his mother and his education in music began. He first heard Western music and had his first lessons in the violin. It was the time of his awakening. “His mother earned a meagre living, carrying items like soyabean in their boat home from Zhuhai to Macao. They were third ‑class citizens, looked down upon by everyone. He was thrown out of school because they did not want such low ‑grade people. He learnt characters from his mother; he drew them on the beach. She liked singing fishermen’s songs, which he enjoyed. Later he wrote them down; that is how his music education began. “He used to deliver food to the homes of the Portuguese; it was there he heard Western music for the first time. A violinist here taught him. He had a deep feeling for Macao, the period of his enlightenment.” Xu said that Xian’s daughter, Xian Nina, had worked at the Hangzhou Library and had now retired. She has often come to Macao.

Chapter 11: Xian Xinghai141After its premiere in Macao, the film was released as The Star and the Sea in Hong Kong in 2010. It was released in the mainland in 2011 as Xing Hai.Film in KazakhstanIn June 2017, partners from China and Kazakhstan announced the making of a new film about Xian, according to a report in Variety magazine. Composer was to be the first film to be shot under a newly signed co ‑production treaty between the two countries. The treaty was signed in Astana, the Kazakh capital, that month by China’s President Xi Jinping  and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Nie Chenxi, Minister of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television and Kazakh Culture Minister Arystanbek Mukhamediuly attended a ceremony to mark the start of the shooting.Directed by Xierzati Yahefu, the film follows Xian’s story. It focuses on a period when he was stranded in Kazakhstan and saved from star‑vation by Kazakh composer Bakhitzhan Baykadamov. There Xian put down roots and composed some of his most famous works. The film is a joint production between China’s Shinework Pictures and Kazakhfilm JSC. The producers are Jonathan Jian Shen, Iris Wang, Kairbekov Bakhyt, and Serik Zhubandykov. “I and my generation grew up listening to (Xian’s) passionate and extremely beautiful symphonies. But we didn’t know he had such a deep bond with Kazakhstan,” said Shinework president Shen. “What we are doing is symbolic. Film makers, directors, and actors/actresses will get acquainted and forge friendship in this process. I wish to see more ex‑changes with China,” said Bakhyt, president of Kazakhfilm JSC.China has more than a dozen bilateral co ‑production treaties, in‑cluding seven with West European countries.The biographical drama chronicles Xian’s final years (1940‑‑45) in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, and Moscow. Beijing ‑based studio Shinework Pictures, which mainly works on co ‑productions with countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, has teamed up with Kazakhfilm JSC, the largest studio in Kazakhstan, to co‑‑produce the movie.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city142The cast features Hu Jun as Xian and Kazakh star Berik Aitzhanov as Bakhitzhan Baykadamov, a famous Kazakh composer and one of Xian’s best friends. The script was written by Su Xiaowei, and the mov‑ie will be directed by ethnic Uygur filmmaker Xierzati Yahefu from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, who made the 2014 biographical movie Genuine Love.Shen, founder of Shinework Pictures, said the idea for the film came from a speech Xi Jinping delivered at Nazarbayev University in Astana in September 2013. In the speech, Xi spoke about Xian, and this led Shen to research the composer. Shen, who also heads the weekly TV pro‑gram World Film Report, assigned reporters to study Xian. Through in‑terviews, including meetings with Baykadamov’s niece and Xian’s daugh‑ter, he learned more about the musician and his work.Xian was stranded in Almaty, suffering poverty and sickness. He was helped by Baykadamov, who provided him with a home, despite not knowing his true identity; Xian was then using an alias. Xian developed a sort of father ‑daughter relationship with Baykadamov’s niece, then a primary school student, who taught him the local language. Speaking about the movie, Shen said: “For them (the niece and Xian’s daughter, both of whom are around 80 years old now), Composer  is not only a movie but also a chance for them to see the person they both deeply love on the silver screen.” The film, to be shot in Almaty, Moscow, and Yanan in Northwest China’s Shaanxi province, is set to premiere on 13 June 2018, the birthday of Xian’s daughter.Hu, the actor who plays Xian, said he accepted the role an hour after being invited to act in the film. “It’s a big honour to play Xian. I was born into a family of musicians, and his Yellow River Cantata is one of my favourites,» said the 49 ‑year ‑old native of Beijing. Aitzhanov, known for playing Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in the biographical hit The Way of the Leader, said Xian and Baykadamov were both noble men who devoted their lives to their countries.Two avenues in Almaty were named after Xian and Baykadamov before Nazarbayev’s visit to China in 1998. Xian is revered in Kazakhstan as some of his most influential works ‑ Liberation of the Nation, Sacred War and Red All over the River ‑ were created during his last years there.

Chapter 11: Xian Xinghai143Stamps in MacaoXian has been remembered in many other ways. In June 2015, Macao Post issued a set of four stamps to commemorate the 110th anni‑versary of his birth, depicting four scenes of his life – his birth in Macao, studies in Paris, time as conductor in Yanan and his passing in Moscow. It printed 300,000 sets.In September that year, a “Xian Xinghai Week” was held in Macao. This included a concert in the auditorium of the University of Macau, where Macao ‑born pianist Choi Sown ‑le played Xian’s work with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra. Other events included a photo exhibition, film shows and a documentary. As part of the 29th International Macao Music Festival in October, the Macao Chinese Orchestra presented the Xian Xinghai and Liu Tianhua Commemorative Concert.Macao was not alone. Other Chinese cities, including Zhuhai, also held commemorative events. They not only marked Xian’s 110th birth‑day, but also the 70th anniversary of China’s victory over Japan.Building a museum in MacaoIn June 2016, Macao Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Alexis Tam Chon Weng said that the government planned to develop two Portuguese ‑style houses into a memorial for Xian. In October 2017, Post and Telecommunications Bureau Director Derby Lau Wai Meng said that her bureau would rent out its two houses next to TDM in Rua de Francisco Xavier Pereira to the Cultural Affairs Bureau for use as a museum. The Post Office owns the two properties. Lau said that the bu‑reau would reference the rents in the private market in the area where the houses are located before deciding on a price.Currently, there are four Xian Qinghai memorial halls, including one in Beijing, one in Panyu and one in the music college named after him in Guangzhou. They contain photographs of his life and his com‑positions; but there is no space for many items donated to China by the Russian government, including compositions he wrote during his time abroad. These are “sleeping” in storage, seen by no ‑one.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city144Deng Xilu, director of the music college, said that seminars on Xian were held from time to time. “But real research on him has stopped. This is because he did not leave many items behind.” He said that the college would be a suitable place for a large museum because of its role as a place of music and a national centre for research into Xian’s life and work. “But, wherever a new museum is built, it must take research into Xian to a new level and promote the use of his music. We need people willing to take on and develop this. This is not something that can be achieved by simply building a museum. We need a group of musicians and scholars who want to do this research,” said Deng.Xian’s ancestral place of Lanhe township has a society for the study of his life and work and two choirs which perform his music. But it has no plans for a major museum.Sources Author’s interview with Xu Xin in Macao in March 2010; China Central Television website; China Daily; Culture and History magazine, Macauhub; Macao Magazine, Variety magazine

Florence Li Tim OiChapter 12

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city146

Chapter 12: Florence Li Tim Oi147First female priest in worldwide Anglican CommunionFlorence Li Tim Oi has earned a place of honour in the history of the worldwide Anglican Communion. In January 1944, she became the first ordained woman priest in its church, because of her service to the community in Macao during the darkest hours of World War II. But, two years later, a male Hong Kong Diocesan officer persuaded her to resign her licence to officiate, but not her orders. It was not until 1971 – 25 years later – that she was allowed to resume her status in the Anglican Communion, when two other women were made priests in Hong Kong.Li chose to remain in the mainland after 1949 and suffered greatly at the hands of the Red Guards. She was not allowed to return to her home in Hong Kong until 1981. From there, she emigrated to Toronto, Canada where she passed away in February 1992. She never complained about the forced resignation nor the suffering she endured during the Cultural Revolution. “I have learnt that God is a vibrant God, a living God,” she wrote. “I have passed through so many ups and downs in my life to learn of his good‑ness, his kindness, his love. With his love and kindness, I have tried to prove that there is a living God in my life, that He is really there in my inner life.”Since her death, she has lived on through a Foundation named after her; it exists to help women in Two ‑Thirds World (non ‑Western) coun‑tries who wish to serve the church but do not have the funds for the edu‑cation they need. Based in England, this Foundation has spent more than £900,000 sterling to support over 430 “Daughters of Li Tim Oi” from 124 dioceses in 14 provinces of the Anglican Communion, in Brazil, Fiji, India, Pakistan, and 13 countries in Africa.ChildhoodLi was born on 5 May 1907 in the Shek Pai Wan district of Hong Kong into a devout Christian family. Her father called her Tim ‑Oi (“Much Beloved”). She had five brothers and two sisters. Her father was the headmaster of a government English ‑language primary school for more than 30 years. Her mother was educated at a school run by Catholic nuns and was a specialist in embroidery and Chinese culture.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city148Dr Sun Yat ‑sen invited Mr Li several times to join his revolutionary movement to overthrow the Qing dynasty; but he always refused, believ‑ing that a revolution would inevitably result in bloodshed. From an early age, the young girl went regularly with her family to services at an Anglican church; her parents also hosted Bible studies and services of worship in their home. The family was not so prosperous and initially could provide only secondary education to the sons and not the daughters. Li attended her father’s school until she was 14 but did not go to secondary school until she was 21. Her brothers had priority. In 1931, she enrolled in the Belilios Public School for Girls and graduated in January 1934, at the age of 27. While studying there, she came to admire Florence Nightingale and decided when she was baptised to take Florence as her English name.Her father strongly hoped that one of his five sons would become an Anglican minister; but none was interested. Florence grew up in this intense religious atmosphere at home. In 1931, when she was 24, she attended the ordination of a British woman, Lucy Vincent, to the diaco‑nate. During the service, the Bishop asked the congregation if any other sister wished to devote herself to the service of God. Florence felt a call‑ing within her and asked in her prayers: “Am I worthy of your request?” After this, she often experienced a call from the Almighty.After her graduation from Belilios, she went to work as a teacher in a primary school for the children of poor fishermen in Ap Lei Chau, in the Aberdeen district of Hong Kong. That year she visited the Guangzhou Union Theological College; its principal, Dr John Kunkle, encouraged her to study theology there. After consultations with her pastor in Hong Kong, she decided to take this course and resigned from her job at the primary school. But her family could not pay the fees at the college, so the Church assumed the cost. During her time at the college, her tutor for the New Testament was a British priest named Geoffrey Allen; he later became Bishop of Egypt and then Principal of Ripon Hall Theological College, Oxford, and Bishop of Derby.In July 1937, the Japanese military launched its all ‑out invasion of China. On 12 October 1938, their troops landed at Daya Bay, 75 kilo‑metres southeast of Guangzhou, and their air force began bombing raids on the city. On 21 October the Japanese captured the city. A student at

Chapter 12: Florence Li Tim Oi149the theological college, Florence lived through the horrors of the bomb‑ing and the Japanese assault. After one of the raids, she led a team of students to rescue casualties of the bombing; she narrowly escaped be‑coming a casualty herself.In 1938, she graduated from the college with full honours. She re‑turned to Hong Kong as a lay worker in All Saints Church, Kowloon. It was a hazardous journey; she had to pass through areas of Guangdong occupied by the Japanese army to reach Hong Kong. On 22 May 1941 – Ascension Day – she was ordained by the Bishop of Hong Kong as a deacon at St John’s Anglican Cathedral in Hong Kong. On 7 December that year, the Japanese air force attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbour, the first blow in the Pacific War. After a swift invasion, the Japanese military captured Hong Kong; its governor surrendered on 25 December. The only city in East Asia that Japan did not occupy was Macao because Portugal was neutral in the war. It became a haven for thousands of refugees, from Hong Kong and the mainland, who wanted to live outside the control of the Japanese military. The war dealt a severe blow to the Christian churches. Pastors who belonged to countries at war with Japan were arrested as citizens of “en‑emy nations” and put in detention camps; many Chinese pastors were conscripted into the military. But the needs of the church community, and the public as a whole, greatly increased because of the war. The women of the church, such as Florence Li, were essential at this critical moment in history. In 1940, the Bishop asked her to go to Macao and help the church deal with the emergency situation.Macao’s CalvaryIn its 400 ‑year history, Macao had never faced such a crisis. After the fall of Hong Kong, its population tripled from 150,000 to nearly 500,000. The Japanese encouraged the outflow, to reduce the numbers it had to feed in Hong Kong. Throughout its history, Macao had never had to support so many people.The Japanese imposed a sea blockade, forcing the colony to sur‑vive on its own food and supplies brought in from Guangdong province, which was itself suffering from the ravages of war and occupation.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city150Refugees who were fortunate stayed with friends and family or found places in homes, hospitals, schools, clubs, and churches. When these became full, those who followed had to live on the streets and de‑pend on charity for their survival. The refugees included women and children who owned only what they could carry, as well as wealthy foreigners and Chinese who moved to Macao as a safe haven, bringing their money, skills, and connections. This meant good business for the city’s hotels, restaurants, inns, and casi‑nos. The Bela Vista Hotel accepted overseas Portuguese who came from Shanghai; the government set up refugee camps on Taipa island.A week after the fall of Hong Kong, the Macao government issued coupons to residents to buy grain. In February 1942, as the price of daily necessities began to soar, it allowed the land in the urban area to be cul‑tivated for food. Japan could have taken over Macao. But, while it repeatedly in‑terfered in Macao’s internal administration, it chose not to occupy it, perhaps because its German ally had decided to respect the neutrality of Portugal and its empire. Or perhaps because it feared reprisals against the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Japanese residents of Brazil. In February 1942, the Japanese military took over Portugal’s other Asian colony, Timor ‑Leste, as it prepared to attack Australia. Its troops were able to enter Macao with little protest from the government; but the consulates of Britain, Holland, France, and the United States remained open and were able to fly their national flags.Gabriel Teixeira, Governor from October 1940 to September 1947, strove to avoid incidents with the Japanese and to maintain what was left of his authority. He banned anti ‑Japanese activities, allowed Japanese ships to dock, and its troops to transit to the neighbouring Zhongshan county. The head of the Japanese secret police in Macao set up his head‑quarters in a villa in the Avenida de Horta e Costa, from where he organ‑ised the assassinations of citizens prominent in the anti ‑Japanese struggle and set up two newspapers as propaganda organs for his government.The biggest headache for the government was the shortage of food. With a sea blockade, the only source of supply was from the mainland. The Japanese military and traders who worked with them stockpiled supplies, driving up prices and forcing most people to live in a state of

Chapter 12: Florence Li Tim Oi151semi ‑starvation. The government used all the revenue from gambling taxes to support the refugees and diverted other resources to relief and charity organisations. Civil society made an unprecedented effort to feed, clothe, and house the refugees. But the numbers were too large. During the war, an estimated 50,000 people died of starvation, cold, malaria, cholera, and other diseases. Each day the Health Department organised staff who went through the streets with vehicles to collect the bodies and dump them in “the grave of 10,000 people” in Taipa. They regularly sprayed chemicals on the streets to prevent the spread of epi‑demics. Some people sold their children in exchange for food. “The win‑ter of 1942 was the worst,” said Chan Su ‑weng, chairman of the Macao Historical Society. “They were picking up 400 corpses a day.”At the same time, since it was the only place in southern China not at war, its restaurants, casinos, opium dens, and brothels boomed, attracting those who were profiting from the war, such as gangsters, Japanese soldiers and officials, and businessmen who worked with them. The most prosperous place was the 11 ‑storey Hotel Central on the Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro, which is still standing today. It housed a casino, upmarket bars, and restaurants patronised by wealthy refugees, military officers, civil servants, and businessmen who profited from the war. While they enjoyed themselves in the hotel, the hungry lay dead at the front door.A large amount of gold, silver, platinum, and foreign currency flowed into the colony. As part of the war, Japan aimed to attack the Chinese government by economic means and force it to surrender. To this aim, Japanese firms set up nearly 50 joint ventures with Hong Kong and Macao businessmen to flood the Chinese market with Japanese goods, drain the country of foreign currency, and buy raw materials needed for the war effort. Many of these firms had offices in Macao and employed local business people. Senior officials of the colonial government held shares in some of them.Deaconess Florence suddenly found herself in the middle of this tragic place. “As I walked to church, I found myself behind the men who had the job of picking up the bodies and putting them into a big wooden box ‑cart to take them to the grave. They packed them on top of one an‑other like sardines,” she wrote. As a single woman, she worked as best

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city152she could. Her first responsibility was to serve the congregation of the Morrison Chapel, many of them refugees. She led services in the church, in Chinese and in English; she also worked in a girls’ school to help and care for the needy.Many refugees lived in the open, in public places, scavenging for food and clothing. Into this dungeon of suffering, Deaconess Li brought her spirit of care and love: she worked as a nurse and helped the refugees to secure food and lodging and bury their dead. She arranged credit for a destitute wife who needed a coffin to bury her husband. One of the refugees wrote about her: “There were ten of us ref‑ugees from China, my parents and eight children, four boys and four girls. We managed to find a single room and this remained our home for four years. After our father died, a young Chinese lady visited us and introduced herself as Miss Li. She explained that she was a deaconess and in charge of the Anglican Church known as the Morrison Chapel. We were happy to join her congregation and, with one of my brothers and sister, I also joined the choir. I remember that there was also a well‑‑attended Sunday school. Life in Macao at this time was not easy. We were very short of food and sometimes unable to find any. Miss Li visited us and managed to bring us a little rice and dried beans and we could make soup. She also visited others who needed help.” After the war, two of those brothers inspired by Florence became priests in South Africa. The government did not have the resources or manpower to care for this army of refugees; much of the burden fell on churches and civil as‑sociations in Macao, which did their best to help the needy. Welfare in‑stitutions, lay and religious, Chinese and foreign, fed and clothed the homeless with soup kitchens and distribution of bread, rice, clothing, and blankets. Kiang Wu Hospital and Tung Sin Tong gave rice and soup to the hungry. The price of rice rose from 0.08 patacas per jin (0.5 kg) to 1.2 in 1942, then to 2.7 in 1945.Florence’s ordinatioSince no priest could make the journey from Hong Kong, the Assistant Bishop licensed her to preside at Holy Communion for two years. The number of believers at Morrison Chapel increased rapidly.

Chapter 12: Florence Li Tim Oi153The Bishop of Hong Kong, Ronald Hall, was in the United States when the city fell. He returned to work in the rest of his diocese in Free China, and was based in the Nationalist capital of Chongqing in Sichuan province in the southwest. From there he followed Florence’s work close‑ly. In 1943, she took a series of three meetings at a large middle school in Macao; as a result, 72 girls signed cards asking to be prepared for Baptism.“No other man pastor has yet had that experience in the Anglican Church in South China,” the Bishop wrote. “But she is not primarily an evangelist; she is a quiet, competent, and sympathetic pastor.” Florence’s work impressed him so much that he decided to ordain her as a priest; he wanted to honour her work and regularise it. “I am merely confirming what the Holy Spirit had already ordained,” he said later. He sent her a message: “If you dare to come and meet me, it is good that you be or‑dained priest and given a proper right to work.” According to the regulations of the Anglican Church, a priest must be ordained in person by a bishop; it could not be done by letter or tele‑gram. Bishop Hall’s decision was historic. Since the Church of England’s foundation in the 16th century, it had only ordained men as priests. The highest position which women could take was deaconess. But Bishop Hall decided that, during the extremely difficult conditions that prevailed in Macao, Florence had shown exceptional qualities that merited her or‑dination as a priest.In normal times, the ordination of a priest is a joyful event that is planned months in advance. Family and friends of the new candidate come together at the church and celebrate the event with the Bishop. There is music, singing, and a celebratory meal. But conditions in 1944 were anything but normal. Bishop Hall was in Chongqing and Florence was in Macao. The Japanese army occupied the territory in mainland China around the Portuguese colony. The bishop chose the home of a pastor in the city of Zhaoqing in Guangdong province as the place for their rendezvous. Meeting there would involve both of them going through Japanese ‑held territory without being arrested or detained. He suggested the date of 25 January 1944. For Florence, this meant a hazardous journey of 250 kilometres, leaving neutral Macao and going through enemy ‑held territory.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city154With help from the congregation, she set out and went on foot and by bicycle, small boat and sedan chair; it took a week. She had been given the names of Christian families and other places of refuge en route. For Bishop Hall also, the journey was no easier – going by boat, vehicle, and foot. The two arrived at the home of the Reverend Lai Kei Cheong within a half hour of each other. She wrote: “We knelt down immediately, in Pastor Lai’s sitting room, to thank God.” The two talked and prayed together for several days. The Bishop asked many questions about her work and calling but did not speak about her being a woman. She said: “The wider issues of the ordination of women were far from my mind as I entered the little church. I was being obedient to God’s will.” In front of a congregation of 100 people, the Bishop ordained Florence in the Zhaoqing Anglican church; they held a celebratory lunch together. Florence was the first female priest of her church in its history of nearly 500 years. Bishop Hall’s decision was against the tradition of the world‑wide church at that time, against its then understanding of God’s will. Women were thought, even by Christian theologians, to be unclean, defiled by menstrual bleeding and even childbirth. Some Anglicans still hold this view today, even though there are women priests serving the church in many countries in the world.Immediately after the ordination, Florence returned to Macao, on a safer route, to resume her duties. The conditions of hunger and scarci‑ty continued; her services were desperately needed, to provide comfort, both material and spiritual, to the residents and the refugees. Throughout the war, Macao was a vital communications source for the outside world. Short ‑wave radios continued to function there, as did the only accessible international cable, linking the colony to Lisbon and London. In August 1943, the Japanese attacked and captured a British cargo ship, the Sian, docked in Macao, killing 20 of its crew. The Japanese suspected the ship of carrying arms for the Chinese army.  In February 1944, the governor banned the use of Chinese money and or‑dered residents to use only currency issued by the local Banco Nacional Ultramarino. In January, March, and April 1945, US bombers carried out three air ‑raids on a naval warehouse in the outer harbour which they suspected of supplying fuel to the Japanese military; five people were killed and a naval museum destroyed.

Chapter 12: Florence Li Tim Oi155Many British escaped to Macao; by the end of the war there were 9,000. The British Consul remained open during the war. It assisted the British Army Aid Group (BAAG), a para ‑military organisation for British and Allied forces in southern China, which gathered military intelligence and facilitated the escape of prisoners of war held by the Japanese. It was organised by Australian Lindsay Ride, Professor of Physiology at Hong Kong University, who was captured during the battle of Hong Kong but escaped from the Sham Shui Po Prisoner ‑of ‑War camp.The nightmare only ended after Japan’s surrender on 15 August 1945, when the government declared three days of holiday. More than 100,000 people took part in the revelry and celebrations, despite thunder and torrential rain. The refugees, Chinese and foreign, were finally able to go home. In September 1945, a month after the end of the war, Father P.J. McCarthy, a Jesuit stationed in Macao, wrote a newspaper article saying that, during the conflict, Macao had been true to its name – “City of the Name of God”.Losing her licenceBut Florence remained a priest for less than three years. She was summoned to Hong Kong and told that either she had to give up the title or Ronald Hall would have to resign as Bishop. To protect him, she re‑signed her licence but retained her priestly orders, so that she could carry on her mission. She told Bishop Hall that she did not need the name of priest to do church work. Others might have left the church in disgust and disappointment at this rejection; but Florence accepted it in good faith and did not let it divert her from her lifetime mission to be a servant of the church and its people. In 1948, the Lambeth Conference – the ruling body of the Anglican Communion – refused to accept that women could be ordained priests. Seen from the vantage of 2017, it is hard to understand the think‑ing of those who voted against that principle. Did they not consider the conditions of hunger, sickness, misery – and, in some cases, cannibalism – in Macao during World War II? Did they not think of the workload she had in trying to take care of thousands of refugees with limited resourc‑es? From where did she draw the strength to carry on this work?

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city156In addition, the ordination had been carried out in the due proce‑dure laid down by the church, with one of its bishops having made the decision after deep reflection and prayer. It was not until November 1971 that Florence was re ‑instated. That followed a decision that year by the Synod of Hong Kong and Macao to permit the ordination of women, the first Anglican province to do so. On 28 November that year, Bishop Gilbert Baker ordained two women in Hong Kong, Jane Hwang and Joyce M. Bennett; Florence was re ‑instated at the same time.In 1947, Florence was sent to a parish in Hepu, a small county of Beihai city in Guangxi, south central China; she was put in charge of the Anglican St Barnabas church. Like many places in China, it needed major rebuilding work after the ravages of World War II. In 1948, she was sent to the United States for a period of study and reflection. In 1949, she returned to Hepu; she built there a large maternity home, a kindergarten, and primary school. One goal of the maternity home was to help new ‑born girls who might otherwise be smothered to death after they were born; as the parents wanted a boy who could work in the fields and carry on the family name – not a “useless girl” who would leave the family when she married.A second CalvaryFlorence had just escaped from the Calvary of World War II when a second was about to begin. When the new Chinese government took power in 1949, she chose not to return to Hong Kong but to stay in the mainland. Initially, the authorities tolerated Christianity. In 1951, she went to Yanjing University in Beijing for further studies of theolo‑gy. In 1953 and 1954, she worked as a professor at Guangzhou Union Theological College. She was also in charge of the ladies’ dormitory there and helped in the city’s Anglican church. The nightmare began in 1958, with the start of the Great Leap Forward. With other teachers and ministers, she was sent to Jianggao township, a semi ‑mountainous area in Guangdong province, where they cultivated wasteland, herded livestock, farmed fishponds, and raised rabbits and chickens. In 1961, they and other non ‑Communists were taken to the Sanyuanli Socialism College for “thought reform in

Chapter 12: Florence Li Tim Oi157Socialism”. Things got even worse with the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.The Protestants of Guangzhou were ordered to establish a chemical factory and she to be a worker there; her job included wrapping tubes for pharmaceuticals. After three months, she was assigned to attach wax to sticky paper. On 25 August 1966, Red Guards burst into her home, beat her and removed all the most valuable items; later, they returned several times to ransack the home. She was singled out for abuse because of her ties to the “British colonialists” and her role as a female priest. The lady students’ apartment building for which she was responsible was turned into a prison; their heads shaven, the pastors were held there. The Red Guards burnt the Bibles and other religious books of Florence and the other pastors. They ordered her to cut her priestly vestments with scissors. In July 1974, she left the chemical factory; she was suffering from a serious eye problem. “I dare not consort with those whom I knew were Christians lest I get them into trouble,” she told the writer of the Li Tim ‑Oi Foundation booklet about her. Under the pressure of brain‑‑washing, she contemplated suicide, but the Holy Spirit reminded her of her priesthood and of her commitment to serve God all her life.The 21 ‑year nightmare finally ended in 1979, after the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution and the launch of the “open door and reform” policy. They were very difficult years for her and all professional reli‑gious. She needed all her inner strength and that of her faith to survive. Like almost everyone else in China during that period, she was for‑bidden from leaving the country, even to go to her home place of Hong Kong. She accepted her predicament and her suffering with an extraor‑dinary sense of forgiveness. Finally, after more than 20 years, the doors of the churches re ‑opened. Li became actively involved in Zion Church, Guangzhou, which resumed services in September 1979. Over 1,000 people crowded in for the first service. She also worked as a teacher of English; there was a critical shortage of such teachers, since universities had been closed for most of the Cultural Revolution.In November 1971, unknown to her at the time, she was re ‑instated as a priest by the Bishop of Hong Kong and Macao, as we described above. It had taken the Church 25 years to recognise its mistake.In 1981, she was allowed to visit Hong Kong to join her family. But

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city158she had to leave behind her savings and her pension rights; she gave them to good causes in China. At the request of the family, she applied for a Canadian visa, to be reunited with other members of the family who had emigrated there. In November 1982, she moved there. She went to serve as assistant priest at the Anglican Church of St Matthew and St John in Toronto, which has services in English and in Chinese. In 1983, she be‑came a permanent resident of Canada.Recognition at lastAnglican Synods in other countries followed the example of Hong Kong and Macao. In 1974, three retired Episcopal (Anglican) Bishops ordained 11 women in Philadelphia. The Anglican Church of Canada followed suit in November 1976, and then that of New Zealand in 1977. By 1983, the Anglican Church of Kenya ordained its first lady minister. Li commented: “Christianity was a gift of the West to the East. The or‑dination of women appears to be a gift from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western Hemisphere.” The Church of England in the mother country did not ordain them until 1994. It remains a controversial issue for a minority of its members.After Florence had become established in Canada, the church made great efforts to show its recognition for her life of suffering and loyal‑ty. On 14 January 1984, she attended a service in Toronto’s St John’s Cathedral to mark the 40th anniversary of her ordination. During the service, she recalled the events of 1946, where conservatives in the church demanded that she resign her ministry. “I felt great pressure and obstacles,” she said. “But I relied on consolation and strength of God and was able to remain loyal to the church for many years and contin‑ue to work in it.” She was awarded a Doctorate of Divinity by Trinity College, Toronto.Also, in January 1984, she was invited to London and attended a service in Westminster Abbey to celebrate the 40th anniversary of her priesting. She was received by Robert Runcie, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, in person; he welcomed her to his official residence, Lambeth Palace. At that time, Runcie was unconvinced whether women should be ordained. After meeting her, he told the Canadian Archbishop Ted

Chapter 12: Florence Li Tim Oi159Scott. “Who am I to say whom God can or cannot call?” In 1988, she was present at the Lambeth Conference, a gathering of Bishops of the Communion from around the world. A film of her work in China was premiered at the Conference.In May 1987, the minister of St Matthew and St John in Toronto held a service of thanksgiving to mark Florence’s 80th birthday and at the same time consecrated a side chapel in the church in her name. The same year, the General Theological Seminary of New York awarded her an honorary Doctorate of Divinity; her sister Rita Lee Chui accompanied her to New York for the event.In 1987, at the invitation of the local bishop, she returned for the first time to her parish in Hepu, Guangxi, at the age of 80, for the making of a film about her. It was a moving moment for her and the members of the congregation.Final yearsShe spent the last years of her life in Toronto, serving her parish and encouraging the acceptance of women into the priesthood; she was an honorary non ‑stipendiary assistant priest. Her sister Rita moved from Geneva in Switzerland to Toronto, to take care of her.After Christmas in 1990, she had a fall at home and seriously in‑jured her spine. Friends who visited her in hospital found that, within 30 minutes, she was asking them about their families and telling jokes. She did not complain and bore her pain patiently.She passed away on 26 February 1992 at her home in Toronto, aged 84. On 2 March, a Chinese Anglican church in the eastern district of the city held a memorial service. She is buried in Toronto; Rita left her archives to Renison University College, Waterloo, in Ontario. Florence wrote: “I have learned that God is a vibrant God, a living God. I have passed through so many ups and downs in my life to learn of His good‑ness, His kindness, His love. With His love and kindness, I have tried to prove that there is a living God in my life; that He is really there in my inner life.”Interviewed on a television programme, Archbishop Ted Scott said: “She was never bitter, never harboured any resentment against those who

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city160caused her suffering. She had the resources to forgive all that had been done to her.”Li herself had said: “I am just an earthen vessel with God’s treasure inside me.” Her only concern was for others, not least that women should be fully valued by the Church and in society.In 2003, the Episcopal Church of the US fixed 24 January as Li’s feast day in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, based on the eve of her ordina‑tion. In 2007, the centenary of her birth was celebrated in the Church of England and elsewhere. St George’s Episcopal Church in Dayton, Ohio, has honoured her with a window in its building; it shows how she kept her Christian faith in the midst of Maoist China, even when she was required to feed chickens. She has also been honoured by windows in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd Anglican church in Chautauqua, New York and in St Paul’s School for Girls, Brooklandville, Maryland. In a frieze at St Gregory of Nyssa Church, San Francisco, she is to be seen dancing with Eleanor Roosevelt. In 2009, her sister Rita provided a window in St John’s Chinese Church depicting the Annunciation. In England, St Martin ‑in ‑the ‑Fields has two memorials to her – a prayer board dedicated on the Golden Jubilee of her Priesting, and an icon on her Diamond Jubilee. A meeting room there has also been named after her, and in the new Oxford head‑quarters of Church Mission Society. Foundation in her nameAfter Li’s death, her sister Rita Lee Chui requested the establish‑ment of the Li Tim Oi Foundation (LTOF), to help Anglican women in Two ‑Thirds World countries who wish to serve the church but do not have the funds for the education they need.Like her sister, Rita had a remarkable career; she was born in 1915, eight years after Florence. Rita earned a Masters at Liverpool University and became the first Chinese woman to work for the International Labour Organisation (ILO). She did so for nearly all her professional life, living in Geneva. She spoke many languages as well as several Chinese di‑alects. It was probably her ILO experience that motivated her to start the

Chapter 12: Florence Li Tim Oi161Foundation; she knew from first ‑hand experience that workers, especial‑ly women, need training to fulfil their potential. To start the Foundation, Rita made a substantial initial donation and continued to give money for the remaining 22 years of her life. She died in March 2016, at the age of 101, and was laid to rest next to her sister in Toronto. The Foundation was officially launched in 1994 on the Golden Jubilee of Florence’s ordination by Archbishop Donald Coggan in St Martin ‑in ‑the ‑Fields Church in London. It was based in what had been the retirement home of Bishop Geoffrey Allen, who had taught Florence New Testament in Guangzhou.In the quarter century since then, it has helped more than 430 women from 124 dioceses in 14 provinces of the Anglican Communion. They are in the following countries – Kenya ranks first with 171, then Uganda 82, Tanzania 53, and Sudan 46. There are others in Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Ghana, Pakistan, India, South Africa, Lesotho, Madagascar, Brazil, and Fiji. The foundation helps young women in developing countries to receive the education they need to work in leadership posts for the Anglican Communion; without this support, they could not receive this education. More than a third have been or will be ordained. Others have been trained for employment in their diocese in positions that include ac‑countant, administrator, AIDS counsellor, auditor, bible college teacher, bishop’s secretary. In addition to, Church Army sister, catechist, evan‑gelist, health centre nurse, lawyer, lecturer, legal advisor, primary school teacher, social worker, and youth worker. So far the Foundation has spent £900,000 sterling. To maintain its work, it would welcome support from the city where Florence Li did so much to help.It has provided funds for women to train in their own context, which is more appropriate for the needs of the student and the local church, than studying abroad. This also allows the Trustees to help many more women. One of the first alumnae was Canon Edidah Mujinya, who be‑came Provincial President of the Mothers’ Union in Uganda and is now Vice ‑Chancellor of a new University with more than 1,000 students. This is what she wrote on behalf of ten Ugandan “Daughters of Li Tim ‑Oi”: “We are forever grateful for the support you ungrudgingly rendered to many of us, women you have not known, who are so far away and of

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city162varied cultures. When many of us had lost hope, were helpless, and stuck in a seemingly impossible situation, you came to our rescue. We are chal‑lenged. You have given us a sense of belonging, worthiness, and a position in society – things that had almost disappeared. You have truly empow‑ered us and we are committed as change agents to empower many others.”SourcesBiographical dictionary of Chinese Christianity; former secretary of the Li Tim Oi Foundation Canon Christopher Hall, who graciously reviewed and cor‑rected the text. We thank him very much for his precious time

Domingos LamChapter 13

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city164

Chapter 13: Domingos Lam165First Chinese Bishop of Macao in more than four centuriesBishop Domingos Lam Ka Tseung was the first Chinese Catholic bishop of Macao. The church created the diocese in 1576, its first in the Far East. In October 1988, Lam became the first Chinese bishop, after 412 years of Portuguese ones; he was the 22nd bishop of the diocese. He led the diocese through the transition from a Portuguese colony to its return to China in 1999. Lam retired in June 2003 and passed away in July 2009.During his 15 years as leader of the church, he received four Portuguese government awards. In 2002, the SAR government gave him the Honourable Medal of Golden Lotus Flower for his personal achieve‑ments and contributions to society. During his period in office, he in‑creased the number of prayer centres and parochial halls, to strengthen the network of parishes. He also supervised the growth of cultural insti‑tutions, to increase the influence of the church in the city. But, during his term, there was not a single local ordination for the priesthood – so the diocese has had to rely on foreign priests to fill the void.“He was the man of the situation,” said Father Luis Sequeira, a res‑ident of Macao since 1976 and formerly the superior of the Jesuits there. “He was intelligent, had great social relations and was accepted in polit‑ical circles. He mixed with Portuguese and Chinese. He accepted deeply the identity of Macao. He assumed the past and its Portuguese tradition. He spoke Portuguese fluently as well as Chinese, although he never lived or studied in Portugal.“He was a man of study and reading. A journalist, he liked the press and books. He wrote a book on the diocese. He made a synthesis of the life of Macao and prepared the future,” said Sequeira in an interview.Early lifeLam was born on 9 April 1928 in Hong Kong. When he was four, he moved with his family to Macao. He attended Don Bosco primary school. After graduation, he went to the St Joseph’s Seminary. There he received a bachelor in Philosophy and Theology in 1953 and was or‑dained that year. Then, he taught at the seminary and the St Joseph’s

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city166Secondary School and was principal of the secondary school. From 1955 to 1959, he was editor of the Aurora Monthly a Catholic church mag‑azine in Macao. From 1959 to 1962, he served as a parish priest at the Our Lady of Carmel Church in Taipa, in Macao; he was also the princi‑pal of Escola Dom Joao Paulino in 1959. During his studies and daily life, Lam mastered Portuguese; but he never went to Portugal to study or live. Father Sequeira said that the sec‑ond husband of Lam’s mother was a Portuguese. “Lam was very respect‑ful to him and used to visit him,” he said. “They lived at San Lazarus.”From 1962 to 1973, Lam was a priest at the St Joseph Church in Singapore; at the same time, he edited the English ‑language Rally Monthly a church magazine in Singapore. Four times he was in charge of the Singapore diocese’s finance. Following after, in 1973, he returned to Macao.Diocese of MacaoIn 1571, a Jesuit college was founded in Macao. Established on 23 January 1576, the Diocese of Macao was the first Catholic diocese in the Far East. Set up at the petition of the Imperial House of Portugal, it was the point of departure for missionary operations in the Far East and of its religious congregations. It was responsible for evangelisation of a vast area, including China, Japan, Korea, Siam, Cambodia, Tongking, and Cochin China (north and south Vietnam) – with a total population of 500 million. In October 1696, the church established nine “vicariatos apolostolicos” (dioceses) for China – Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guangxi and Guangdong, Tonking, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hubei and Hunan, and Shanxi and Shaanxi.Over the next four centuries, the Macao diocese was active in many fields – religion, education, charity and social services. It established the Holy House of Mercy, the St Rafael Hospital (now the Portuguese consulate), and the St Lazarus Leprosarium, as well as 60 schools and education centres that now have 40,000 students. Today it has six parishes and three sub ‑parishes, nearly 20 churches, 30,000 believers and 350 priests and nuns. The first Bishop of Macao was Melchior Nunes Carneiro Leitao, a Portuguese. He retired in 1581 and died two years later. He was buried

Chapter 13: Domingos Lam167in St Paul’s Church; his remains were later transferred to the city’s ca‑thedral. For the next four centuries, the Bishop of Macao was always a Portuguese, despite the approach of the handover to China and an increasing number of Chinese believers. Before its revolution in 1974, Portugal was a conservative, colonial country. Its colonies were run by Portuguese people, with very limited representation of local people. Sequeira said that, before 1974, an African priest could become a bishop only if he were exceptional. “That was the mentality. It was only after the revolution that Angola and Mozambique had local bishops. The evolution came slowly.”During World War II, the bishop was Joao de Deus Ramalho, a Jesuit, who served between 1942 and 1954. Bishop Lam wrote a book about the Bishops of Macao, in which he wrote of Bishop Ramalho: “He took great care of the refugees from the nearby regions, he sheltered the priests and nuns who escaped to Macao. He also built convents, set up a few social service organisations, reconstructed the seminary, developed the St Joseph’s College. and purchased a house at Rua da Praia Grande as the Normal School of the College.” In 1954, he resigned and retired to Portugal. Lam returns to MacaoFrom 1973 to 1976, Lam was Rector at St Joseph’s Seminary in Macao. In 1976, another Portuguese priest took over as Bishop of Macao – Arquiminio Rodrigues da Costa, a native of the Azores who had come to Macao in 1938. He was consecrated in the cathedral on 25 March 1976. The Catholic community was one third Chinese and two thirds Portuguese and Macanese. The new bishop realised that the time had come for a change and that he needed to groom a Chinese successor; he decided that Domingos Lam was the best choice. In 1976, the Pope appointed Lam as the Vicar ‑General at the Bishop’s Office in Macao. On 26 May, he was appointed Coadjutor Bishop of Macao; and on 6 October 1988, succeeded Arquiminio Rodrigues da Costa, the last Portuguese bishop.Sequeira said that, during the transition, the bishop had to be Chinese. “The church needed a Chinese with a sense of two cultures. Lam was sharp with a good sense of administration. He was well acquainted

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city168with the Portuguese and Chinese sides. He had good relations with the Governor. He was very balanced and respectful.” In the years leading up to the handover, many Catholics left – Portuguese, Macanese and Chinese. They went to Portugal, the US, Canada, Australia, and other countries, taking their families with them. They have been replaced in the churches in part by Filipinos who have come to work in Macao in the casinos, hotels, shops, and restaurants, and by new migrants from the mainland.Lam was the only religious representative invited to contribute to drafting the Basic Law of Macao. He was a voting member of the Macau Basic Law Drafting Committee from 1988 to 1993. Of the 90 members of the Macao Basic Law Consultative Committee, 20 were Catholics.It was not an easy assignment. The Vatican had, and still has, no relations with the Beijing government due to disagreements over the ap‑pointment of bishops and the treatment of the “underground” church and other issues. Fortunately, these conflicts did not exist in Macao, so negotiations were simpler. The central government promised that, after 1999, the church in Macao would be able to operate as before, including management of its schools, social centres and other institutions. So it has proved to be. The Macao church cannot enter the mainland and evange‑lise its population; but it is allowed to preach to those who have moved to the SAR.Father Sequeira said that Bishop Lam meticulously prepared the handover, which was to take place at midnight on 20 December 1999. “He held a Thanksgiving Mass on 19 December. The next day he held a Mass of Blessings and invited the new Chief Executive Edmund Ho to enter from a big room. As he did, he was applauded by everyone. Ho was not a Catholic. It was a fine gesture.” Sequeira said that both Ho and Lam shared a sense of balance in understanding Macao, the harmony of the Portuguese/Latin element and the Chinese. “There was never ten‑sion.” This is what was needed in the years before and after the handover.Work as BishopIn his history of the diocese, this is how Bishop Lam described his own time in office:

Chapter 13: Domingos Lam169“After his inauguration, he received great support from different congregations and the government. He went in for large ‑scale construc‑tion, renovated and built schools, seminary, churches, the bishop’s office, the Convention Centre in Coloane and premises for social services, for the continuation of evangelisation in Macao … He had served as a mis‑sionary in Singapore for 12 years and had been active in cultural circles in Macao.”Father Sequeira said that Bishop Lam had his strengths and his weaknesses. “He tried to update the structure of the diocese. He had the religious orders legally recognised and all the land and buildings reg‑istered. One example of this was the official donation of St Dominic’s Church to the diocese after it had been renovated. It was the Governor who gave the key to the Bishop. In legal terms, this needed to be updated. After the revolution of 1910, the Portuguese government had taken over the churches. This was Bishop Lam’s vision, to put things in order.”In its obituary of the Bishop after his passing in July 2009, O Clarim, the Catholic newspaper of Macao, said that he had made many contribu‑tions and led the church through the handover to China. In addition to the existing six church districts, he built three more, to meet the growth of Macao. It said that he had had close relations with the Portuguese government and developed the church’s relations with Chinese churches in different places. He played the role of a bridge, enabling the church in Macao to have good relations with the Chinese government and serve believers in the mainland. Before the handover, many Portuguese believers left Macao; Bishop Lam had to overcome this challenge. Lam had to encour‑age believers to retain their faith during the handover. During his time in office, he built many meeting centres and museums inside churches, to make Macao a meeting place for the Asian church and develop it as a place for religious tourism, linking it with its history.Father Sequeira said that Lam’s weakness was inadequate work with young people, the schools and families. “He was weak in the pasto‑ral dimension,” he said. There has been no new priest ordained in Macao since 1992; this means that the average age of the local priests has been increasing every year. “There are not enough local priests,” the Father said. The void has been filled by foreign priests. “The religious orders

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city170have come to Macao to help in the parishes. Younger priests are working as missionaries. They must speak Cantonese, even Mandarin. They have come from Europe and Latin America, Timor ‑Leste and South Korea. There are Philippine priests to help the Filipino community.”Asked to describe Bishop Lam’s personality, Sequeira said: “He was exuberant, extrovert, a little too expansive. He liked talking and meeting people. He was very sensitive to those in need. He gave a lot without talking – families, students, and priests. He was generous, gentle with people. He was tender and kind ‑hearted … He liked to write articles for newspapers. He was very sensitive to history. He liked music, including the organ, which he played himself in the Bishop’s House.”Lam served as Bishop until 20 June 2003 and as bishop emeritus after that. He was advisor to many civilian associations in Macao. In 1990, he received an award from the Portuguese government. In 1996, he founded the Macao Inter ‑University Institute to train Masters’ and doctoral students. He also served on the board of the University of East Asia – now the University of Macau – from 1981 to 1991.In 1990, he received the Dom Henrique medal from the Portuguese president. In 1999, he received an award from Portuguese president Jorge Sampaio.RetirementHe retired on 30 June 2003, aged 75. Canon law requires that bish‑ops request retirement when they reach that age. His application was ac‑cepted by Pope John Paul II. Lam was succeeded by Bishop Jose Lai Hung‑‑seng, the first bishop of the city to be born in Macao. On 30 June, the new bishop addressed a dinner reception at the Bishop’s House for all di‑ocesan priests and representatives of all Macao male and female religious. He praised Bishop Lam for enhancing the recognition the Catholic Church enjoyed in Macao by promoting higher education and supporting charity, as well as by serving on the Basic Law Drafting Committee Committee. Lai also praised Bishop Lam for the pluralistic character of the diocese which served Timor ‑Leste refugees and Filipino workers as well as local Chinese Catholics; in addition, it evangelises new migrants from mainland China. The new bishop also spoke about the severe shortage of priests in

Chapter 13: Domingos Lam171the diocese. “Most priests are aging and no local candidates are on the hori‑zon. The most recent ordination for the diocesan priesthood was in 1992.”Speaking a few days later, Bishop Lam told UCA News that the ag‑ing of local priests and the lack of new priesthood candidates was the big‑gest problem facing his successor. “The reserve of Macao’s native priests is almost used up and the new bishop cannot solve this problem on his own. As of May 2003, there were 20 diocesan priests and 52 religious priests serving Macao’s 30,000 Catholics,” he said. “Macao’s society and economy offer the Church a stable environment for development. The new bishop will be well appreciated if he can generate priesthood voca‑tions, but the local Church will wither away if he cannot.”Lam said that, after his retirement, he would remain in Macao. “By the end of 2003, I will finish a Chinese translation of a book I originally wrote in Portuguese on 30 years of Macau church history. As a man of literature, I am obliged to point out the problems in Macao and offer support with statistical data.”Bishop Lai said that he would facilitate the Church to continue its ministries in education, social services, youth, priesthood vocation, and es‑pecially laity formation. “I plan to make part of St Joseph’s Seminary a laity formation centre, not least because it has no seminarians and is not well uti‑lised. I hope that enhancing the systematic formation of laity will allow lay people to take up more administrative posts in the diocese, thereby freeing clergy and religious for their pastoral duties. I will invite all religious con‑gregations in Macao to co ‑operate more closely with the diocese.”PassingIn March 2009, he fell ill and was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. On 11 May, he went into hospital. He died on 27 July, at the age of 81, surrounded by members of his family and many fellow religious round his bed. A funeral Mass was held on 31 July at the Cathedral of the Nativity of Our Lady. He was buried at Sao Miguel Arcanjo cemetery.Father Joao Evangelista Lau Him ‑sang, a priest at the cathedral, described Bishop Lam as “a person influenced by Portuguese culture and Western education, enabling him to become a bridge between the church and Chinese society” in Macao.

Pioneers of Macao: The story of 14 Chinese who helped to make the city172RememberedIn November 2012, St Paul’s School, a Catholic diocesan school, opened its new “Bishop Domingos Lam Memorial Building”. Principal Alejandro Salcedo said: “A new school building does not just happen. It takes months of planning and organization, optimism and perseverance, and unfortunately, some frustration also.” He thanked the Education Department and the Macau Foundation for providing MOP 56.796 million and MOP 37.66 million respectively in funding. “I must say that, without your funding, this project would not have seen the light.” The new building comprises five floors, where classrooms for the youngest students of the kindergarten section as well as for the high school pupils are located. These include laboratories, communitarian rooms, where the students can do homework on their “tablet pcs”, and craft corners for the youngest. St Paul’s School is a diocesan school run by the Dominican fathers, which Salcedo said provided “the beautiful experience of a Catholic edu‑cation”. He explained that the school was committed to “modern teaching and learning for the 21st century” and would certainly be aided by the new building’s facilities. “We are proud of our past but it is a must for us to detach ourselves from it and embark on a new educational dimension…St Paul’s School is well known for the immersion of technology in our educa‑tional programs. However, for us to ‘tech’ or not to ‘tech’ education is not the question. The real question and the real aim for us is to harvest the pow‑er of technology to meet the challenges of the 21st century and make edu‑cation relevant, responsive, and effective for anyone, anywhere, anytime.” Explaining why they named the building after Bishop Lam, Salcedo said: “Bishop Domingos Lam was one of a kind. I was very close to him and, if I had to describe him, I would say that he was an ascetic, joyful, wise, actively involved with the physical and spiritual welfare of his people, and he was a dedicated and effective teacher. Bishop Lam was very fond of St Paul’s School. On many occasions, he used to drop by or call just to see how we were doing.”  Chief Executive Chui Sai On attended the ceremony; after the inau‑guration, the then Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, Cheong U, and DSEJ director Leong Lai were given a tour of the new building.

Chapter 13: Domingos Lam173SourcesArticles in O Clarim, the official newspaper of the Catholic community in Macao; “Brief History of Bishops of Macao Diocese” by Bishop Domingos Lam; Interview with Father Luis Sequeira, S.J.

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