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Boarding School at Singapore of the American Board. One was Leung Tsun Tak (梁遵德) who was employed as an interpreter at the Hong Kong Magistracy. He was a son of Leung Afat (梁亞佛) an ordained evangelist of the London Missionary Society,49 The other lad was Wei Akwong (韋阿光) whom Bridgman had picked up sick and starving on the streets of Macao some years previous. Akwong, unlike the other Chinese we have been mentioning, never received baptism. At first he assisted Bridgman in his missionary work in Hong Kong, but when Bridgman moved to Canton in 1845 Akwong remained in Hong Kong. He became compradore for the ship chandlers and storekeepers Bowra and Company, but in 1855 was appointed Supreme Court Interpreter in Chinese and Malay. In 1857 when the Mercantile Bank of India, London and China opened its Hong Kong office, Wei Akwong became the bank's compradore. He retained this office until his death in 1878 and was succeeded by his son Wei Ayuk (韋亞玉) alias Wei Bo Shan (韋寶臣). Wei Akwong was a recognized leader of the Chinese community, and his name appears on numerous petitions and memorials. Like Wong Shing he sent his sons abroad to study. His eldest son Wei Yuk married a daughter of Wong Shing, and followed in the footsteps of his father-in-law by serving on the Legislative Council from 1896 to 1917.50 He was knighted in 1919 and died in 1922.
The Bishop of Victoria had under his patronage upon his arrival in Hong Kong in 1850, a young Chinese whom he had met in England. Chan Tai Kwong (陳大光) was a native of Pun Yu District of Kwang Tung, but he turned up in England in 1845 as a young man aged eighteen. How he got to England and what he was doing there, I have not been able to determine, but in 1849 the newly appointed Bishop of Victoria met him and took him under his patronage, with the hope that he could be trained as an evangelist among the Chinese. Soon after coming to Hong Kong, Tai Kwong was sent to Singapore to marry Gay Eng, also known as Sarah Hughes, a pupil in the school for Chinese girls conducted by Miss Grant. Upon his return to Hong Kong he was placed on three years' probation before ordination, but the Bishop did license him to preach to the prisoners in the Victoria Gaol. Chan Tai Kwong, however, had difficulties in adjusting to his new position. His experience in