JASON WORDIE

As mourners paid their respects at the funeral yesterday of General Ho Shai-lai, son of the well-known millionaire Sir Robert Hotung, a gradual closure in direct links with one of the more interesting aspects of Hong Kong's past was quietly
marked - the evolution and rise to wealth and  prominence of Hong Kong's Eurasian community.

It might surprise many to learn that a man who ended up as a general in the Nationalist Army, regarded by all as a Chinese and who was rightfully hailed as a Chinese patriot, should have had a paternal grandfather by the name of Bosman, a    British merchant of Dutch descent.

This little-known fact illustrates many of the contradictions, paradoxes, and chameleon-like identity changes inherent in the role and position of Hong Kong's Eurasian community. It also sums up the various choices they have made - or have had
to make - in order to win acceptance and recognition from both the British and the Chinese in the wider community.

In Shanghai, Eurasians tended to take the name of their fathers. In Hong Kong it was frequently the opposite, with Eurasian children in the early days taking on the family name of their mothers. This was done in order to blend into the wider Chinese community, and so avoid the opprobrium associated with mixed ancestry.

Ho Shai-lai's father, the famous Robert Hotung, was of the first generation of Hong Kong's Eurasians. He made his start in life as a clerk in the Chinese Maritime Customs earning $30 a month, and later became the compradore for Jardine,     Matheson and Co. Subsequently he branched out on his own, a move that proved spectacularly successful.

In 1906 he became the first non-European to live on The Peak. . The Peak district was at that time reserved for Europeans, by ordinance, a situation that was not changed until after World War II.

Hotung's mixed ancestry made him strikingly handsome in his youth. With advancing years he bore a marked resemblance to George Bernard Shaw. The likeness was well illustrated in a photograph taken of the two men together in the 1920s when both wore Chinese dress.

During the Sino-Japanese war, Sir Robert Hotung gave generously to the Nationalist Government, contributing aircraft amongst other items in the struggle against the Japanese. The influence of his son Ho Shai-lai, then serving in the Nationalist Army, must surely have played a significant role in these contributions to China's war effort.

In Dutch or Portuguese colonies inter-racial marriages were largely accepted and in the cases of Java and Macau, rich Creole cultures developed as a result, elements of which still persist.

The Hong Kong Portuguese community, descendants of migrants from Macau after the foundation of the British colony, are an enduring local manifestation of this cultural interchange.

Coming as they did from a cultural background that accepted them, and in which they could participate fully, the local Portuguese had far less of the sense of insecurity and grievance that often affected the Eurasians.

In British colonies, however, Eurasians formed a despised, marginalised underclass. They were generally regarded as being the progeny of low-class men and even lower-class native women. Few roles existed for them.

Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong from 1854 to 1859 once remarked, "A large population of children of native mothers by foreigners of all classes is beginning to ripen into a dangerous element out of the dunghill of neglect".

They were stigmatised as unreliable, untrustworthy and said to inherit the worst aspects of both peoples. Literary works such as John Masters' Bhowani Junction, set in India before partition, vividly illustrate their equivocal and tenuous position on the fringes of colonial life.

Few expatriates in Hong Kong spoke any Chinese. A knowledge of English among local people was seen as a path to higher things, and ambitious parents strived for an English education, as many still do.

Both Government business and commercial matters involving a Chinese and a European partner were conducted in English. Interpreters were therefore necessary and young Eurasian boys, equipped with a knowledge of both written English and spoken Chinese, admirably filled the gap. The role of compradore seemed tailor-made for them. Their initial disadvantage of falling between two cultures became for many the key to their later success.

The word itself is a legacy of the Portuguese in Macau, and means to arrange or facilitate. That is exactly what the compradores did. They facilitated the deals between European and Chinese businessmen, helped smooth over problems that arose from the meeting of different cultures, and took a handsome commission for doing so. In the course of time many built up their own business contacts, and branched out independently.

Partly to cater for the need for English-literate staff and clerks in the administration and in the business community, the Government Central School was established in 1861. Many Eurasian boys attended this institution, which later became Queen's College, still one of Hong Kong's most prestigious Government schools today. Sir Robert Hotung attended the Government Central School from 1873 until 1878, leaving at the top of his class to join the Chinese Maritime Customs. The story goes that every day his mother gave him money to buy his lunch, but he always saved some in his clay money box - the early start perhaps to his considerable fortune.

Sir Robert Hotung - and his brothers - later became generous benefactors to the Government Central School and to other institutions in Hong Kong, Macau and on the mainland. He later endowed the Central British School in Kowloon, on Nathan Road. This was built to cater exclusively for European children whose parents, for various reasons, did not want to send them to England to be educated. Such were the mores of the time, however, that despite having paid for it Hotung's daughters were unable to attend. Being Eurasian, they went to the Diocesan Girls' School instead.

The racial differentiation in Hong Kong society was more polarised last century. An examination of the social position of Eurasians, therefore, serves as an indication of how racially segregated society was until World War II. Given this situation more than a few chose to downplay, and in the course of time ignore, their European ancestry in favour of being totally Chinese.

Clothing worn by the Eurasians is an interesting indicator of the duality of the Eurasians' situation, and helps to delineate the conscious choice of being "one" and not "the other".

On formal or very public occasions dress was emphatically Chinese, almost archaic in style and of the best possible quality. When on public display they were Chinese, everything outward pointed towards it, and they made sure they were not mistaken for anything else. The Hotung family, being among the wealthiest and most prominent, are a vivid example of this trend.

In private, however, most wore European dress, had English names by which they were known among their family and friends and spoke English as the language of preference.

For the most part, they shared many other European cultural norms which few Chinese of the day, however Westernised, had adopted. Many Eurasians were very European in temperament, but could and did become Chinese when it suited them.

Another custom embraced by the Eurasians was that of taking a secondary wife or wives. This traditional Chinese custom was mainly a privilege of the wealthy who could afford to maintain two or more spouses. Polygamy remained fairly common - as well as legal - in Hong Kong until the law was changed in 1971.

Polygamy was one of the elements, in addition to  wealth, that marked an upper-class Chinese family in Hong Kong. This practice was adopted by several Eurasian families. Sir Robert Hotung had two wives and a concubine. The custom generally worked well in upper-class Chinese families that had grown up with it, and few problems existed.

This self-conscious and at times piecemeal choice of cultural display, however, sometimes led to its being rather studied.

As with the highly Anglicised indigenous elites in India and elsewhere, who became in time "more English than the English", a number of Hong Kong's Eurasians were "more Chinese than the Chinese". At times they were privately ridiculed for this
posture by other "real" Chinese.

Many of those prominent in representing the interests of the Chinese community right up until the 1950s were Eurasian, a fact little-known today.

The prominent local lawyer and long-time member of the Legislative Council, Sir Man-kam Lo, (Hotung's son-in-law) was an unofficial member representing the interests of the Chinese community. Today this would be viewed by some as a   contradiction and be challenged but in former years it was accepted that Eurasians would have the ability to fully  understand and represent the views of the majority they were appointed to serve.

A study of the Eurasians and the compradore class in Hong Kong can serve a purpose beyond an interesting record of social history.

It can indicate that the need of individuals to make these choices and adapt to changing circumstances in Hong Kong is not new.

The nature of Hong Kong has always provided the bright and ambitious with the opportunity to transform a case of life's lemons into a highly successful lemonade venture.

The social acceptance accorded to Sir Robert Hotung in the course of his long life neatly illustrates the parvenu nature of Hong Kong society, a continuity as much in evidence in the past as today.

Great wealth, judicious philanthropy and long residence in a transient place all helped ensure that the half-caste son of a father, little more of whom is  known than his name, could be knighted twice, live up on The Peak when no others of his background could and at an advanced age die and be eulogised as the Grand Old Man of Hong Kong.

It is a great tribute to the ability and tenacity of Hong Kong's premier Eurasian families that they managed to transcend family circumstances that on the face of it were rather unpromising in the beginning, and rise to positions of great affluence
and considerable influence.

The conscious orientation of Hong Kong's Eurasians towards China, both as a cultural and as a political identity is now new. It is a carefully calibrated one based on perceived advantage, personal identity and wider social acceptance.              Likewise, their varying means of accommodating their European heritage is not a new phenomenon either.

Sir Robert Hotung, the most famous of the Eurasian compradores, made his decision to be Chinese well over a century ago. His son Ho Shai-lai, the distinguished Nationalist general who died at the age of 92 and whose funeral was held yesterday in his own way made his decision to throw in his lot with China as well.

In the process they made a significant and lasting place for themselves in the wider community of modern Hong Kong.