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SCMP Reporter

FROM the pigtails of the Qing dynasty to the hardships of the Japanese Occupation to the moment Britain returned the colony to China . . . it has been Hong Kong's century, and Chan Cho-chak's.

 Mr Chan was two when the Western calendar began 1900, and he has every intention of being around for the fireworks to celebrate 2000.

 At 102 the centenarian is far from reclusive. His Broadcast Drive home, cluttered with antiques, faded photographs and historical manuscripts, has the value of a museum. His possessions document in rich, personal detail the everyday life of ordinary Hong Kong citizens.

 Still energetic, Mr Chan has excellent hearing and eyesight - the latter of which he proudly demonstrates by reading aloud from the fine print of a newspaper. His speech is slow, but his thoughts are clear and forceful.

 Born into a scholarly family in Dongguan, Guangdong province, Mr Chan was the youngest of four children. Like most boys from wealthy families he studied under a tutor who encouraged eloquence in written essays. The training served him well: a prolific essayist, his byline 'Dongguan Chan Cho-chak' ran for years in the now-defunct Wah Kiu Yat Po.

 Those early days were difficult. Mr Chan vividly recalls the social blights that plagued the Qing dynasty before it collapsed in 1911 - when he was 13.

 Many Chinese, including Mr Chan's father, were ravaged by their addiction to opium. 'My father died when he was 30, and I was three,' he said. 'I remember seeing many people - from the upper class to coolies - smoking opium squatting on the street.'  He also remembers finding the foot-binding of females intolerable.

 'Foot-binding was a very cruel system for girls, who could not venture outside their home,' he says. 'And it was only after Sun Yat-sen's revolution that girls were free to go to school.'  China became a republic in 1912, but the provisional government was unstable as warlords fought for power. At 17, at school in Guangzhou, Mr Chan was recruited by Yunnan warlords advancing north on Beijing. But there was corruption and in-fighting and he soon grew disillusioned and left the bedraggled army in Hunan.

 He stepped ashore in Hong Kong late one evening in 1917. He slept overnight at the pier, before the next morning taking the ferry to Tsim Sha Tsui, then hiring a rickshaw to Kowloon City. On the way he remembers seeing tigers roaming the hills in Lok Fu and Tsz Wan Shan. 'There were plenty of tigers - we used to hunt them sometimes - and Kowloon City was teeming with foxes and other wildlife.'  New immigrants set up home in streets with familiar names: Shanghai Street (Mongkok), Nanking Street (Jordan) and - Mr Chan's home for 20 years - Changan, the Kowloon City street named after the famous road in Beijing.

 'The British Government allowed us to maintain all kinds of local customs,' Mr Chan says drily. 'After all, their chief interest was to collect tax.'  He remembers those pre-air-conditioning days as 'very sweaty'. It seemed there was a typhoon signal 10 every year. He first worked in the newspaper delivery business and later sold textbooks in 1924. 'Hong Kong was so poor many people went to work [elsewhere] in Southeast Asia and Australia, or seek their fortune in San Francisco's gold mountain, over long sea voyages,' Mr Chan says.

 He married at 25, and in 1931 founded the Chan Kan Woon Department Store. Business thrived and he opened six branches. Mr Chan became busy and his wife had to care for their seven children. She was busy, too - and came up with a pragmatic solution.

 'She found a concubine for me without my knowledge, to help out at home and in the office.'  The situation had an irony to it. 'All along I disapproved of polygamy and even wrote to the newspapers on many occasions condemning it. And yet I was forced to have a concubine.'  Since it was his wife's idea to introduce the young neighbour to her husband's marriage bed, she had to accept all the consequences even though it was not always easy for any of them. At that time many Hong Kong men had up to four wives and it was not until 1971 that monogamy was enforced.

 Life changed for everyone on Christmas Day, 1941, when the Japanese invaded. Daily rations were two catties of rice. It was not enough, and people ate roots, grass and - in desperation, Mr Chan said - even babies. He said the flesh of abandoned children was on sale in the streets of Shamshuipo. Meanwhile, Mr Chan risked his life sailing to Macau to smuggle potatoes and other food.

 In the 1950s mainland refugees flooded Hong Kong to escape communism 'and the masses slept on the streets'. The 60s were characterised by Red Guard riots, arson and union strikes. Hong Kong was so unstable that thousands walked to China, after the government stopped the trains.

 'Hong Kong people weathered terrible hardships to come to where they are today,' Mr Chan says.

 A longtime philanthropist, Mr Chan has served the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals and the Lok Sin Tong Benevolent Society for half a century. In the 1950s he helped open a free school for girls funded by Lok Sin Tong. There are now six Lok Sin Tong schools which provide financial assistance to needy students.

 Mr Chan maintains a healthy lifestyle, waking at six to practise qigong. In the afternoon he attends charity meetings and sometimes is so busy he does not come home until midnight.

 'I set goals for myself every day,' he says. 'If a person lives without a goal, he ages faster.

 'Many people want to know how I am able to live so long, and I tell them you must live with a clear conscience. Doing a lot of charity work makes me happy, and that helps.'  Mr Chan has outlived his wife but not his concubine who, at 87, stays in an elderly home. They meet twice a week.

 He keeps in close touch with his nine children, 27 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Britain.

 Last turn of the century he was too young to celebrate. To mark the millennium, he says: 'I haven't planned anything special, I'll see who asks me to dinner.' 



Witness to 100 years of history