The history (and debauchery) of Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club as it marks 40 years at its iconic Central location

Annie van Es was a sassy young secretary in 1968, when she lunched at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club with a friend working at the BBC. In those days the club – a small bar and restaurant – occupied a corner of the Hilton Hotel in Central, where the Cheung Kong Center now stands. Photographer Hugh van Es spotted her from the bar and invited her to join him for a drink.

Seven years later, the Dutch cameraman would capture the iconic image of Americans leaving Saigon, on one of the last helicopters out, the day before the city was captured by the North Vietnamese army.

The picture would become one of the most iconic images of that war, but on this particular afternoon, Hubert (Hugh) van Es was in Hong Kong taking time out from covering the conflict. For him, it was love at first sight. For Annie, a local girl who knew little about the war, it was her first glimpse into a different world.

“Before dinner elsewhere we would always meet at the club for drinks,” she says, “and after dinner always led to the FCC for a ‘yat for the doh’ [one for the road].”

The FCC is tight knit, complete with petty squabbles and sibling rivalries, but it has always looked out for its own. And in many ways the heritage building is the family home. More than half a century after the couple’s first meeting at the Hilton, this year marks the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club’s 40th anniversary at its current location.

And the FCC is not exclusively a club for the press. Its membership is a mix of correspondents and journalists and non-media members known as “associates”. These are the bankers, lawyers, PR executives and business folk who enjoy – or at least don’t mind – rubbing shoulders with journos who are, sometimes, a little rough around the edges.