Gutzlaff Street in Central is easy to overlook and remains slightly shabby; rather like the reputation of the man it takes its name from.
The street is an apt memorial to the controversial 19th-century European missionary and gifted linguist who became embroiled in the illegal narcotics trade - dressed as a Fujianese sailor - before becoming a central figure in the first opium war. Indeed, it's virtually impossible to read a history of 19th-century southern China the without the name of Reverend Karl Gutzlaff appearing somewhere in the margins.
Sinologist Arthur Waley described Gutzlaff as 'a cross between parson, pirate, charlatan and genius, philanthropist and crook'. Yet the same charlatan and crook served at the heart of the British colonial government as Chinese secretary to the governor of Hong Kong.
So who was Gutzlaff and how did this former apprentice saddlemaker from Prussia end up playing such a central role in China?
It was the Netherlands Missionary Society that first sent this headstrong physician, linguist and man of God to Asia, as a chaplain in the Dutch East Indies. Within a year he had left them, as it had always been the Chinese who obsessed Gutzlaff. He regarded them as 'acquainted with letters, endowed with intelligence and boasting of a civilisation superior to that of any other nation'.
As Jessie Lutz says in her biography of Gutzlaff, Opening China - Karl F.A. Gutzlaff and Sino-Western Relations: 'For an individual as ambitious and free-wheeling as Karl Gutzlaff, the lure of China was irresistible.'
It was in Siam, as Thailand was then called, while working as a physician, Bible translator and preacher, that Gutzlaff adopted traditional Fujianese dress, invented a Chinese identity and perfected his command of several Chinese dialects.