Uniquely HK

History Matters

Taipingshan

When the new city of Victoria took shape, the Chinese quarter was to the west of the main business district. Western District soon became overcrowded and notorious for its unsanitary conditions. What is left of the old area in today’s modern city?

The government set aside an area called Choong Wan, but its main road was Tai Ping Shan Street; soon everyone knew it as Tai Ping Shan. The name is an alternative name to Victoria Peak, and literally means “Peace Hill”. It had been given its name after Chang Pao-tsai, Hong Kong’s most famous pirate, surrendered to the Viceroy of the Two Kwangs (the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi) in 1810. British colonial officials decided to reserve prime sites in Central District for Western-style houses and foreigners and Chinese residents were removed and encouraged to move to Tai Ping Shan, which became the main Chinese quarter. It quickly developed a reputation. The Chinese writer Wang Tao wrote in 1860 that the street was full of brothels: “gaudy houses, sporting brightly painted doors and windows with fancy curtains”. No doubt the troops stationed in Hong Kong were regular visitors.

Hong Kong’s Chinese population rapidly increased as, not only did strife in China encourage a flow of refugees, but also the thriving city provided opportunities to make money. Tai Ping Shan quickly became crowded and in the next decade it spread westwards to an area known as Sai Ying Pun. Rapacious landlords took advantage of the ever-increasing demand for accommodation. Most of the Chinese were poor and the landlords, both European and Chinese, built low-quality tenement blocks to house them. Sanitation was virtually non-existent. No wonder that when the plague spread from China it descended on Tai Ping Shan.

The first outbreaks were in 1894. The situation was made worse by the fact that the Chinese did not want the bodies of their loved ones taken away for sanitary disposal. The authorities had to act and they sent in the “Whitewash Brigade”. This was a volunteer force of soldiers and others who forcibly cleaned up the area and whitewashed the buildings to sanitise them. Although this greatly reduced the incidence of the disease it continued occurring for some years. The worst of the tenements were demolished and a public garden was laid out – Blake Garden. Blake Garden, named after former governor Sir Henry Blake, remains as a small urban park near the Man Mo Temple in Hollywood Road. Today, although overhung by old banyans, it is mainly covered by sports pitches and a children’s playground.

A medical facility was also established in the area. Built in 1906, it was designed as a Bacteriological Institute, and renamed the Pathological Institute after World II. It was the first bacteriological laboratory in Hong Kong, made up of three red brick blocks. In 1972, the institute was relocated to Victoria Road and the building was used as a storeroom for Pathology Service for the Health Department. It was declared a monument in 1990 and, in 1995, handed over to the Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences Society and converted to a museum. The aim of the museum is to exhibit Hong Kong's medical history as well as to preserve historical medical materials relating to the local development of medicine. It is situated at the top of Ladder Street which runs up from Hollywood Road next to the Man Mo Temple. As its name implies, it is steep and is a series of flights of steps.

The museum has developed a medical heritage trail in the area as more hospitals had been established there. The area between Tai Ping Shan and Sai Ying Pun saw the development of many of Hong Kong’s early hospitals, including Lock Hospital (1858), for the care of prostitutes and treatment of venereal disease, the first Government Civil Hospital (1859), the Lunatic Asylum (1886) for Europeans, and the Chinese Lunatic Asylum (1891). The local community funded other medical facilities aimed at promoting Western medicine. These included the Chinese Public Dispensary (1905), the Plague Hospital (1909) and the Tsan Yuk Hospital (1922), a maternity hospital. Many relics of attempts to provide for the health and social needs of the population of the earliest Chinese residential district in Hong Kong still survive including the first Chinese Hospital, opened in 1872, bathhouses, the Bacteriological Institute and the site of a disinfecting station and ambulance depot, all forming part of the Tai Ping Shan section of the heritage trail.

The old tenement blocks have gone but the more modern replacements still give an impression of the crowded conditions of the early development. Indeed some of these blocks are being claimed as heritage buildings even though they have no architectural merit. Hongkongers have woken up to the fact that very little that is old has survived the relentless progress of developers and want to preserve some memory of the past. Tai Ping Shan, being the oldest Chinese district of the city, is certainly the most appropriate place to house that reminder. Let us hope that it can be carried out in a meaningful way.