Out and about
Hong Kong's once-prominent Parsee community has largely vanished. The most prominent of the city's Parsees for more than half a century - and a major public benefactor in his day - was Hormusjee N. Mody. Born in Bombay in 1838, Mody came to Hong Kong in the early 1860s.
Like most Parsees - Zoroastrians from India - in Hong Kong, and almost all other local businessmen of his era, Mody was involved in the opium trade. He later branched out into property development and other enterprises. One of the first to see the development potential of the Kowloon peninsula, formally added to the colony by treaty in 1860, Mody invested extensively in land and property there from the 1870s; Mody Road in Tsim Sha Tsui bears his name.
From that time, Mody was a close business partner, neighbour and friend of leading Armenian entrepreneur Sir Paul Chater, who had moved to Hong Kong from Calcutta in the 1860s. Chater and Mody were the entrepreneurs behind the Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company (later to become the Wharf group of companies), which conducted an extensive reclamation on the western Kowloon foreshore in the early 1890s. After completion, ocean-going ships could berth alongside wharves rather than off-lighter their cargo out in the harbour. This greatly aided ship turn-around times in port and helped propel Hong Kong's 1890s economic boom.
Mody's most lasting benefaction to Hong Kong is the least remembered. When plans to establish a university in Hong Kong were discussed in the early 20th century, Mody was approached for funding. He offered to put up HK$150,000 - a huge sum in those days - for the construction of a principal building if a similar amount could be found elsewhere. After some dithering on the part of the local business community - then, as now, hopelessly slow to see the long-term benefits of 'human capital' investment - a matching sum was found and construction started in 1910.
Mody presided at the opening ceremony and laid the foundation stone. This can still be seen in the entrance foyer of Hong Kong University's Main Building; on the inscription Mody is described as a 'Parsee gentleman', which he most certainly was.
Mody died the following year - sadly, before the university opened - and was buried at the Parsee Cemetery in Happy Valley. His white marble grave, tucked away discreetly behind clumps of golden cane palms, is the most elaborate in the cemetery - appropriate for one of Hong Kong's most philanthropic, and shamefully least-remembered, early citizens.