Given the demographic, English has always been a minority tongue in Hong Kong - whatever its status as an official language. Few English-language memoirs written by Hong Kong Chinese personalities exist but probably the best is Dr Li Shu-fan's Hong Kong Surgeon, published in 1964.
Li was a licentiate of the Hong Kong College of Medicine (a precursor to the University of Hong Kong) and subsequently served for a time in the early Chinese Republican government, as minister of public health under Sun Yat-sen - an alumnus of the college. Li was appointed to the Legislative Council in 1937 and also founded the Hong Kong Sanatorium, in Happy Valley.
Present in Hong Kong during the early stages of the Japanese occupation, Li offers a rare first-hand glimpse of that period through the eyes of a prominent Chinese witness. He decamped to free China in 1943 - to avoid working with the Japanese - and spent most of the remainder of the Pacific war period there.
White Jade, Li's picturesque home, was perched high above Happy Valley and was famous for its rose garden, which contained more than 2,000 bushes. Using specially planted Casuarina shrubs as windbreaks, he became one of the few local gardeners to successfully cultivate this temperate species in Hong Kong's humid, sub-tropical conditions.
Li evocatively describes his evening walks around the garden, out 'to the rose pergola on the projecting rock promontory. A gentle evening breeze played about the Peak, and I looked down on the broad, irregular expanse of Hong Kong, and across the strait to Kowloon and the mainland of huge, enigmatic China. The ferryboats were gliding forth with seeming effortlessness, like lighted toys on the distant dark water. Night was descending on our 'Fragrant Harbour'.'
Li was also fond of adventurous outdoor pursuits; an accomplished big-game hunter, he travelled to East Africa several times to hunt elephant, lion, leopard and other 'dangerous wild animals'. Skins, mounted heads and other hunting trophies featured prominently throughout his home.
