The Peninsula hotel will celebrate its 75th anniversary on December 11 - a landmark all the more remarkable when one considers the vagaries of history, and the commercial intent of shareholders, which the building has survived. In 1922, work was halted because the original plans were thought unsuitable. In 1925, even as it was lurching up from its foundations, a special board meeting was called to discuss cancelling the project. That the building went ahead is testimony more to a spirit of crossed-finger helplessness than sunny optimism: the board's minutes state: 'it is impossible to stop The Peninsula work now in progress without most seriously damaging the interests of the company and placing its credit in jeopardy'.
Thirteen years after the opening, Japanese troops moved in when the hotel became the temporary headquarters of the victorious imperial invaders. Apart from the Observatory, the hotel was the only building still standing and relatively intact in Kowloon when the Kadoorie family, majority shareholders in Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, the company that owned The Peninsula, returned to the colony from Shanghai in 1946.
In 1963, the hotel underwent substantial renovation work, but by the early 1970s it looked as though The Peninsula would be lucky to make its 45th anniversary. The owners of a new development across the road had approached the board with an offer to build a modern hotel on the site of the Peninsula. 'Irrespective of the history of the building which, might I say, not everyone on the board accepted was of value, this was certainly an opportunity that had to be looked at,' says the Honourable Michael Kadoorie - chairman of Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, and the 62-year-old son of Lord Kadoorie, Hong Kong's first homegrown peer - in his careful, fastidious manner. (He is a man most punctilious in matters of grammar and fact.) 'I, for one, didn't feel that.' Even then? 'Even then. I was one of only three, out of nine directors, who felt the history of this building was of such importance we should retain it.'
The crisis passed - decided, as such commercial forks-in-the-road often are, by world events. The 1973 oil crisis made the new venture financially unrealistic and so, 30 years later, The Peninsula has lived to have its gala 75th celebration. Not all the Kadoories wanted this outcome, however. Horace Kadoorie, Michael's uncle and chairman of the board at the time, was keen to save the hotel but as Michael continues: 'My father, who was not on the board, said, 'Pull it down! It was no damn good to begin with - I remember when it went up there were faults here and there. Far better to have a new building.'' (The Peninsula's manager of corporate affairs, who is sitting in on, and taping, the interview shifts in her seat.)
Lord Lawrence Kadoorie, one takes it, was not a sentimental man. His son robustly agrees: 'Not in the least. He'd have been quite happy to pull down our synagogue [Ohel Leah, built in 1901 on Robinson Road] too. He always looked to the future. He had no sentiment for historic buildings. He was a Victorian, born in 1899, and he could see that things could be much better. Fortunately, I didn't inherit those genes.' What did he inherit? 'Some degree of sentiment and a sense of history...maybe from Uncle Horace. I think my mother would have been more my ilk too.'
His mother, the former Muriel Gubbay, is still alive and living in Hong Kong, such is the family's enduring genes: Lord Kadoorie was 94 when he died in 1993, and Sir Horace - as he became in the 1989 Queen's birthday honours list - was 92 when he died in 1995. 'My father always attributed his success - when I say success, I mean what little he achieved, I'd rather you say it right - to the fact that he had my mother by his side,' says Michael. He pauses, wanting to make himself clear. 'I say 'what little he achieved' because I don't think anyone achieves very much. I think we all achieve a little. You can say, 'that's relative'. But when you think of world events, it really is very small.'