Gardens a living reminder of our colonial past, say historians

Historians say Ho Tung Gardens is a living reminder of an important chapter in the city's colonial history as Sir Robert Ho Tung was the first non-European to receive permission to live on The Peak.

Antiquities Advisory Board member Joseph Ting Sun-pao said the mansion had to be seen in the context of the anti-imperialist sentiment of the 1920s. 'The greatest value of Ho Tung Gardens is that it was an exception to a law that forbade Chinese to live in The Peak.'

He said Ho Tung, a Eurasian with good networks with the Chinese, helped mediate a strike that spread in Guangzhou and Hong Kong in 1926. The next year, the then governor Sir Cecil Clementi granted an exemption from the law to let him build the mansion.

'Ho Tung was of Dutch and Chinese ancestry, but he considered himself Chinese and dressed in a completely Chinese fashion,' Ting said. 'The exemption and the erection of a Chinese-style garden on The Peak carried great significance in that era.'

Another board member, Ko Tim-keung, said the Chinese Renaissance style site was of more historical interest than the King Yin Lei mansion in Stubbs Road and Haw Par Mansion in Tai Hang. 'Ho Tung Gardens is beyond compare. The other two sites do not have such interesting stories behind them.'

Ho Tung, born in 1862, started his career with British-owned trading firm Jardine Matheson. He served on the boards of charities, helped set up the Chinese Club and was its first chairman. He was knighted in 1915 and 1955.