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children took Mme Hardoon's surname-Lo-the Eurasian children the surname Hardoon. Their ostentatious life-style was particularly noted. The Aili Garden, designed to be in the style of the Da Guan Yuan of the Dream of the Red Chamber, embraced a temple and a school. After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911, it was said that the Hardoons assumed the life style of the court by entertaining imperial concubines and employing eunuchs as retainers.
Actual facts known of the Hardoons are somewhat less flamboyant. Silas Hardoon was born in Baghdad. At the age of five, in 1851, his family moved to Bombay where his father worked for the Sassoons. In 1873 he moved to Shanghai to work for Sassoon as a clerk. His parsimonious living, administrative skills, and keen business sense soon enabled him to become a rich man himself. He engaged in opium sales and real estate speculation. Instead of buying expensive land in the British settlement, he bought land for himself and for the Sassoons in the External Roads area. And, when the settlement expanded, land value rose. It was said that he made as much as 500 million taels in one single transaction. Hardoon married a Chinese woman and had little to do with Jewish religious or social life in Shanghai, despite his significant gift to the construction of the Beth Aharon synagogue for the orthodox congregation Sheerith Israel. Before and during the Revolution of 1911, Hardoon and his wife harboured revolutionaries in the Aili Garden. Whether or how much they contributed towards the revolutionary coffers is unknown.
Silas Hardoon died in 1931 and was buried in the Aili Garden. This final act of disregard of religious tenets again angered the Jewish community since the garden was not consecrated ground.
The Kadoories
The first woman to drive an automobile in Shanghai was Lady Kadoorie, wife of Sir Elly Kadoorie, an Iraqi Jew who made his fortune in real estate utilities in Shanghai. Kadoorie was a part of the Sassoon establishment until he went on his own. One of their sons, Lawrence,* was to become Lord Kadoorie, the first man from Hong Kong to sit in the House of Lords at Westminster. He has remained active in finance and industry in Hong Kong. Their other son, Horace, is known for his support for education of Jews all over Asia, including Israel. Horace likes to be active in all aspects of founding a school, from curriculum planning to staff hiring, in addition to fund raising. In Shanghai in 1939,
* Since deceased [Editor]