Exposing The World

Colonial Hong Kong

The World’s Freest Country

Although nominally a British colony, Seventies Hong Kong enjoyed total autonomy and a fully free market economy under limited and highly local government. While mainland China was still in early recovery from the Cultural Revolution after Henry Kissinger’s initial contact, Hong Kong’s gross product exceeded that of the entire mainland
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Although large numbers of Chinese refugees swarmed into Hong Kong, its ebullient economy enabled them to quickly make the most of their entrepreneurial spirit.

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An Overcrowded Haven

Happy Valley Racetrack was virtually the only large open space in a city that consumed most of the space on its small island.

The distinctive Jardine House was colloquially called the “Emmenthaler building” because of its resemblance to Swiss cheese
As Mao’s army swept through mainland China, a large part of the country’s wealth escaped to Taiwan and elsewhere. Much of it resettled in Hong Kong.

Niches for nature

Even then, the city had a few open spaces that offered relief from the crowds

Flamingoes and other curated tropical birds

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The refugees

These tenements were built fast to house Chinese refugees. Though there was little space for each person, life was infinitely preferable le to starvation on the mainland.

A lone shoe shiner. Nobody came to Hong Kong to beg in those days; they started with whatever jobs they could manage with scrounged gear, then worked their ways up.
This man is making keys by hand
A casino under construction.
Rickshaw rides for tourists was still another small business
Old colonial schools, built for the British elite, being repurposed for an expanding Chinese population
Apartments of better quality were available, for those climbing the business ladder

Around town

As an expatriate elite gave way to a rising local commercial class, Hong Kong became a chaotic mixture of new and old

The round building up on top is the terminus of the Peak Tram funicular
The Peak Tram makes its way up the hill
Clothing washed in small apartments had to dry on poles sticking straight out from the building. There was no other space for clotheslines.
A public poster and grievance wall. Today, just public poster walls.
At the inland border, we can look across at China. At this point it is just starting to emerge from the Cultural Revolution.
Before technologic development, this is how everyone lived.

Tiger Balm Garden

Tiger Balm Garden, originally built as an advertisement fro a nineteenth-century liniment by Aw Boon Haw.




On the water

Because Hong Kong was located on islands at the mouth of the Pearl River, much of the city’s culture flows from the sea

The Wan Fu, the Hilton Hotel yacht, was a great way to see the harbor



Summer thunderheads tower over the city as the air heats up. Soon it will be the season of typhoons.
This huge floating restaurant was a part of Hong Kong’s typhoon shelter “floating world” of refugees who lived on small boats
Yaumati Typhoon Shelter, a totally enclosed area of the harbor where refugees set up a whole culture of their own
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