“Clubs appeared across the British Empire – in Madras [in eastern India], Bombay in western India], Penang [in Malaysia] and Sydney [in Australia],” writes England. “At the club there would be mail, and newspapers. There would be fellow traders and an entry point into local society, where all the latest intelligence about local wars or large personalities could be gleaned. Clubs were vital to the functioning of the Empire then, in a way that can only be imagined today.”

The Hong Kong Club was launched in May 1844, and its first clubhouse opened two years after that. From the very beginning, its members were a “Who’s Who of early Hong Kong”, England writes, including merchants, military men and government officials.

It would eventually be followed by dozens of private members’ clubs – for ladies, for longshoremen, police officers and sailing enthusiasts. Today, there are 586 licensed clubs in Hong Kong, according to Home Affairs Department figures.

“I’m a member of four clubs – the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, the [Royal Hong Kong] Yacht Club, the [Hong Kong] Country Club and the [Hong Kong] Jockey Club,” says Paul Zimmerman, a Southern District councillor and CEO of Designing Hong Kong, an urban development watchdog.

He didn’t set out to join them – opportunities for membership simply emerged in the 35 years that Zimmerman has lived in Hong Kong.

“There are so many clubs throughout Hong Kong,” he says. “But of course, there is also the community that has never had access to one.”

In recent years, that disparity has become a point of political contention.

In 2018, environmental group Green Sense pointed to the “social injustice” of 27 private sports clubs that occupied 300 hectares of public land, for which they were exempted from paying nearly HK$400 million (US$51.4 million) in annual rent. “The government in fact has been subsidising the rich,” said Green Sense CEO Roy Tam Hoi-bong.

Lee Wing-tat, chairman of Land Watch, told the Post that developing 34 hectares of the course would not help solve the immediate housing crisis, since the first units wouldn’t be ready to move into until 2032. But he said it was a decision of symbolic importance.

“Most golf-playing people are well-to-do, and they have been enjoying public concessions,” he said. “Where do you find such unjust social policy?”

Can the same be said about Hong Kong’s private clubs as a whole? Do they embody the inequality of a city where the gulf between the haves and have-nots seems to grow wider with every passing year?

The answer is yes – and no. From the very beginning, clubs functioned as a kind of social leveller. “Clubs helped – and help – to overturn social hierarchies as much as reinforce them,” says England. “They provide bars and foreshores on which ordinary people can consort with others less ordinary on an equal basis as club members.”

The Victoria Recreation Club (VRC) is a prime example.

Clubs like the VRC have their roots in the laissez-faire style of governance adopted by Hong Kong’s early colonial rulers. “From very early on, something that was embedded in Hong Kong’s DNA was a lack of public space,” says Terry. “These clubs were meant to compensate for that.”

They also had the effect of giving different social, cultural and ethnic groups a stake in Hong Kong. “Hong Kong had no community-building spaces, except the clubs,” says Terry. Club Lusitano and the Club de Recreio served the Macanese and Portuguese communities; Club Germania catered to German expats; the India Club and Indian Recreation Club were places where families with roots on the subcontinent could gather.

“Although the clubs seem to be compartmentalised, the impact is to give deep roots to the international, cosmopolitan side of Hong Kong,” says Terry.

That was the explicit goal of the Hong Kong Country Club when it opened in Deep Water Bay in 1962. Membership was offered to all nationalities – a rarity at the time.

“The primary purpose of the club, according to a member of the general committee, is to develop international fellowship and understanding,” the Post reported.

When the Ladies’ Recreation Club (LRC) was founded in 1883, it was to provide Hong Kong’s expatriate women with “a suitable place for healthful exercise”, the Post noted on the occasion of its centenary.

At the time, other Hong Kong clubs were the exclusive domain of men – specifically white men, reflecting the strict racial segregation that was enforced in the early colonial era. As a former member of the Hong Kong Club told journalist Liam Fitzpatrick in 2003: “There was nothing in the rules to say that Chinese couldn’t join. It had simply been understood that you didn’t put a Chinese up for membership.”

That points to the inherent contradiction of club culture: while a club may be a social leveller for those within its walls, it serves also to divide members from the rest of the general public. In many cases, the walls have only grown higher. The invitation-only Aberdeen Marina Club costs HK$3 million to join; those who tough out the 10-year waiting list to join the Hong Kong Country Club are rewarded with an entrance fee of HK$460,000.

“Certain elite poseurs and tai-tais think brandishing a club membership is like having the latest Gucci handbag,” says England. But she insists that isn’t the case for most club members, and she argues that clubs continue to function as “social glue” for a city that still lacks sufficient high-quality gathering spaces.

“Most of us don’t have room in our tiny homes to socialise so we can do it at our clubs,” she says.

The question is how much longer that club culture will continue to exist.

Many struggle to attract younger members. “Some of them look like old people’s homes,” says Terry. Young people may see the clubs as dowdy – but in many cases they couldn’t join even if they wanted to, simply because they can’t afford it.

Jun Tam grew up going to Yau Yat Chuen Garden City Club in Kowloon Tong with his family. “I went there once a week when I was a kid,” he says. “We’d basically either have breakfast or yum cha and then there’s a couple of things I’d do afterwards, mainly going to the arcade, or I’d play table tennis with my dad.”

Although Tam and his wife recently had their first child, he doesn’t foresee joining a club any time soon. “I would consider joining one only if the price is right,” he says. “Right now clubhouses in Hong Kong charge a pretty ridiculous price for membership. And since I can find similar facilities at a much cheaper price elsewhere, I don’t really see it as necessary.”

The clubs will only become more expensive. In 1983, when the LRC renewed its 50-year lease for the third time, then-president Gilian Oldfield said: “It is anyone’s guess whether the Ladies’ Recreation Club will still be in existence in 2033.”

It’s still anyone’s guess. From 2027, the 27 private sports clubs will need to pay one-third of the market value of their land as rent, which could make it a challenge for clubs such as the LRC and VRC to survive.

Others, among them the large block of sports and recreation clubs around King’s Park – including the Kowloon Cricket Club, Kowloon Bowling Green Club, United Services Recreation Club and Club de Recreio – could be easy pickings for property developers. “Some of those clubs are very underutilised,” says Zimmerman.

Even if some clubs disappear, though, Hong Kong’s club culture is likely to endure. After all, before this city had hospitals, schools, public parks or public transport, it had a club.