Page B
THE CHINA MAIL, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1961.
In the
the third of his series
DAVID LAN tells the story of
Mr Cha Chi-ming
textile king
the
THE textile tycoon gave up two factories in China to set up three in Hongkong
in spite of the howling abroad for restrictions and quotas.
Always an optimist, Mr Cho Chi-ming sat smiling behind his expensive desk
in the panelled executive suite in the new Union House.
"There is still a bright future for the Hongkong tex- tile industry if we aim at quality and variety instead of quantity only," he said.
dle talk Bir Cha haust rompleted the last link 17 has combine with the elablishment of the New Terri- fries Textiles Lid — a spinning ant weaving section,
The other links are the Chine Dyeing Works Lid, the biggest textile finishing plant in Hong- kong, and the Broadway Sports- wear Ltd, a garment factory
He is the Managing Director of all three.
Mr Cha is a great believer in a combination of factories engaged in- different phasES of manufacture of a product.
"Internally it ensures Com- polition among the member fac- turics as well as utmost Com ordination among them in meet- ing buyers' special orders. "The end products of one factory can serve as the raw materials for another factory.
"There we have the advantage of saving in raw material costs
They are all
fall-out free
Peter Burgoyne's... News from Britain
London.
a
EARLY November days must be puzzling NATURAL STEP to our visitors. For weeks past tin- Britain's nudists, meeting be- rattling small boys had been getting under- hind locked doors
centrally-heated room, have foot on city pavements, hawking life-size decided that from now onwards effigies in soapbox carts and old permabu- the lators, chanting "A penny for the guy, guv?” (or, sign of the times, "A shilling..
And what were all the mysterious mounds of brush- wood, tea-chests, and any- thing else combustible, that had been rising for weeks out of Britain's parks and back gardens?
as
It all cruplert into one acrld, spullering evening el rainbow fire that was about Rear PS Wi phlegmatic Britons ever ELT
Mardi Gras: The Glorius Filth, allas Guy Fawkes Night, alias Bon- fire Night.
Spacemen
ing their time-honoured obli- gations to Britain's youth.
Tropical
British Breworks blaze oul often against tropical night skies and over dense green jungles. Tin-lined ases have been shipped out from British factories to light with golden fire such far-Hung occasions as the Feast of Bairam celebra- tions in Constantinople; dis- plays for the Sultan of Morocco at Pez: Bolivia's centenary cele- brations al
La Paz. When our Queen Elizabeth was crowned, many an alien sky was lit by the glittering panoply of the Royal Palms, the Royal Lattice, the Colon- en nade of Coronation Fountains, the Royal Diadems, the Royal
The old magic never falls. Edlerly hearts that thought they were past it gladdened all over again when it was
time to light the bonfire and Star, the Whirling Sun Flanked the blue touch paper of such well tried firework favourites By Two Royal Stars, the Vic-
will call themselves
to
naturists
Their motives are under- standable: they do not wish be confused with stripteasers When naturists remove their clothes, they stress, 11 is in the pursuance such athletic ac tivities as sun-bathing and sca bathing.
The progress that was report- ed to this annual congress of the British Sunbathing Associa- tim-continued headway in the recruitment of young people to the cult is surely striking when one looks at the weather
But is it not playing Into the punters' hands to have
35
an
emblem, on blazer badges and car pennants, a silver bear sur- rounded by a golden sun?
or retaining part of the proft within the groun itself.
"In case certain materials are in short supply, we needn't worry when we can obtain, say grey cloth from our own weaving section.
"Any factory making a profit would mean benefi for the group as a whole."
BRANCHED
He illustrated the co-ording- tion facility with a big army order from a country abroad for cloth of extra high tensility
"Without a vertical set-up, one could not have coped with such an order" he pointed out.
China The
Dyeing Works Ltd, one of the three plants in Mr Cho's textile combina-
tion,
In Mr Cha's opinion, the new textile industry in Hongkong is not lower in standard and efficiency than any other textile industry abroad.
Established in Taun Wan in The textile industry in Hong- 1949, the China Dyeing Works Rong started out several years Ltd сап
process 00,000,000 ago as a refugee setup.
square yards of plece goods from
grey to finished state.
It bleaches, mercerises, dyes,
and prints cotton and rayon
fabrics and sanforises (pre-
COMPETITION
seller's
shrinks) all kinds of cotton "These refugee factories then piece goods.
In 1959. Mr Cha branched off could by their hands on and would use any machinery they into garment manufacturing by tuckily they had 3 setting up the Broadway Sports- market at the time. wear Ltd in Kowloon, with a capacity for turning out 120,000 dozen year.
OUTPUT
And this year, he established the New Territories Textiles Ltd a alle opposite the China Dyeing Works Ltd.
от
"But in recent competition has made it almost yeurs, more
impossible to sell low quality products and our standard and efficiency have particularly been enhanced
since buying from U.S. and UK. started,
“And I can say that in stand- ard Hongkong is not inferior to any other country abroad."
Ressons for the success of Hongkong textiles?
TITANS FROM THE
It can produce 15,000 bales of yarn of 400 lbs each per year.
At $1,900 per bale, the annual output of cotton yarn will come to $15 million in value.
The new mill also weaves 10,000,000 square yards of piece goods a year.
At $1.5 per square yard, the annual output of piece will
goods amount to another
$15,000,000.
labour,
●Mr Cha Chi-ming at his desk,
NORTH
and in V.K.
"This is a $64,000 question," Mr Cha conceded, "There is no worker no longer warrants such be quipped, "Credit must go gainsaying that Hongkong for high wages as those prevailing to the refuger industrialists, once depended on cheap
Hongkong Govern- skilled labour. ment and local banks as well. "In the first place, the refugee entrepreneurs were more or less in a 'do or die' situation,
RETREAT
"And the younger generation "Workers here have always nowadays thinking highly of been very co-operative. They their knowledge and intellect are very much better than their simply do not want to get jobs counterparts in UK, and Japan as workers in textile mills, and all the rest of the world. "The net result was a virtual shortage of factory hands, further boosting the wages,"
"Then the Government and banks always tried to give you With allowance for some over-
what you wanted. This is parti-
Mr Cha went so far as to think "For them, there was no re- cularly true of the Government that under the circumstances it lapping due to supply of yarn
is almost a sheer waste of money from its own spinning section to treat at all. When the die was its weaving section, a fair cast, they went
totally unwise A few examples of Govern- and
for Lan- all out in a ment assistance he mentioned:
cashire to reorganise, estimate of the total combined whole-hearted
effort to do a output of the new textile mill good job of it and later, inspired
"If the U.K. diverts her at- Ita policy on labour did not tention to the would be somewhere about by a sense of achievement, to do
highly technical encourage disputes in the in- industries it would lead to a $20,000,000 a year.
even better."
dustry.
bright future for both the U.K. the and Hongkong," he said, Ita negotiations with electricity companies aimed at Born in Haining, Chekiang, in further reductions in costs of 1014, Mr Cho graduated from Industrial power.
the Hangchow Technical College in 1982 specialising in textiles.
He worked with textile mills for six years just to gain ex- pertence.
Xmas, 1961 Under the
The Glorious Filth (see
as little demons, jumping jacks toria Falls of the Zambest, and above) was once followed by a
catherine wheels, rockets
is
(there
a new one this year with
a spaceman in its nase-cone). roman candles, mines of ser- pents,
jack-in-the-boxes, and
devil-among-the-tailors.
We owe it all, of course, to one Guy Fawkes, the most notorious of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, who tried to blow up the Houses of Parlia ment in 1605-bu Was dis- covered in the vaults with his 36 barrels of gunpowder.
Mr Fawkes was tried, con- demned and executed; and the Fifth was pronounced as a day of national thanksgiving for ever.
at
And thus it is that his effigy roasts atop our bonfires,” and that small boys marvel what one British firework maker describes in his catalogue
Ruby stars
Vistas of golden -fountains, stars of flickering silver, nests of Bery serpents, mines of scorpions, cascades of glittering jewels, ascending. umbrelles of golden fire, jade green clouds, showers -- of emerald spray, ruby stars with silvery tails
It all seems just a little unfair to ME Fawkes, who was described in contemporary, ac counts as a man of Agerat plety of exemplary temper ance, of mild and cheerfui de- meanour, an enemy
the Fire Portralt of BM. The Queen.
And there is this at least to be said for the kind of fire- works we export:
Every one is guaranteed fall-out free!
BOTTLED
Acts
FERVOUR
decently long workday interval before Christmas set in.
But no longer.
Already several London stores are announcing the mar- vellously simultanerus arrival at their respective toy
counters
of Santa Claus. And at the beginning of the month
grass
By David Ash
promotion activities abroad such as exhibition and publicity work helped sales of Hongkong textile goods,
And Government's dexterous “shadow boxing"ak Mr Cha put -- with governments overseas seeking "voluntary" quotas ́of restrictions saved the industry time and again from disaster.
favourable Those and the market conditions in the first
to the success of
TALL elms marked out the horizon. A Steel few years, Mr. Che said, have all the toymakers of Britain Kave Age tractor was ploughing an adjacent field Hongkong textiles. us a preview of what the year's in the breezy, undulating Hertfordshire uplands. best-dressed Christmas trees
will be wearing.
au.
of protest against
It is no surprise to anybody thority tend to be less ven- who has been following social turesome nowadays.
But I was looking at the Iron Age earth by my THE LANCASHIRE feet.
I was down a hole in the
Against trends to find that the old our ground, you see. A very ordin-wall clay, and some stuff that all this joyona recollection of sery favourite of skittles has ary-looding hole, as holes 0; looked like charcoal the incendiary Mr Fawkes, become a "Ten-Pin Bowling About it. In diameter and
and will flat- Alley or that "Dotto" is now nearly as deep. about the latest labelled "Home Bingo."
there seemed a certain ness manoeuvre of the Committer
,《:
have to be Identified by a botanist..
PROBLEM
Mr Che thought of the Lan- cashire problem in the light of the history of industrial develop- ment in an advanced country, I was grovelling about at the And perhaps, these progrEE~ of 100, which is the "ginger sive days, a tiny TV aerial is in bottom of the hole with a trowel. chaeologist's hand, or trowel takes the pattern from agricul
Had I not developed ar- "The development usually. group" of our nuclear dis-
fact an essential compone
of It clanged on something hard.
blister, I would have gone on ture to light industries, on to atzners. They trooped to the Russian & bök of building bricks,
I traced its outline in the diaging Feople usually do, once heavy industries and finally to Embassy in London and left But do two television charac-chalk clay, then carefully dug they've got Archaeology.
the filghly technical Industries outside a cluster of hottles of tors known as Huckleberry it out. A yellow shank of bone..
such Some are week-end enthusitronics, precision instruments as nuclear energy, elec- "milk, all labelled Radio Hound and Yogi Bear Teally A very early murder? A
deserve their star billing on the morsel of a mammoth? A piece asts, but nearly all work under and other products of top skill One of the bottles, it is report- labels of sixty news games, of pterodactyl? One's imagine the guidance of an expert, like and quality," he said.
tion can easily run
tall, moustacked Mr Moss. "An el, was later confiscated by toys and confectionery lines?
"In the case of the UK. It And are small, girls so ad these occasions.
wway on assistant curator of the museum developed its cotton and wool- an old age pensioner, who
in Letchworth Garden City he ten-textile industries for con was board to remark that dicted to "Emergency Ward
Mukh, much
more recent started an excavation in the turies and, when some other
sotive
if the indig was just going to 10," a TV serial, that they want
Then in 1938, he organised the Dah Ming Spinning, Weaving and Dyeing Co, Ltd? with two factories, one in Changchow near Shanghai and the other in Chungkinh.
for
He was director and manager both until 1949 when he abandoned them on moving south to Hongkong.,
What is the life of a tycoon like?
Up at 7 am daily, he reads
and books papers
about the industry.
By 9 am, he is down at the mills to begin the day's tour of the plant.
At 11 am, he is out in his Hongkong office.
He works up to 8.30 pm, For him the schedule calls for a seven-day week except Sundays when half a day's work will suffice.
Except for .an
Occasional movie, "technical knowledge and machinery of textiles have be- come my major hobbies:
Corner stones of his suc cess?
Like most successes in other fields, Mr Cha's edifice is bullt on foresight, determination, per severance and enterprise,
Morinaga
WHITE BEACHE
be left there it would do her to play with hospitals complete than that," said Mr John Moss, county near by or soltan countries followed up diverted THE CANNED WHITE PEACHES
more good?
with models of eight people an who is running this archaeolo found a couple of skeletons, ita erat in the direction, of
Another bottle was empty by crutches?
the time it reached the Em-
• bahay.” The nuclear diiurmer
who, bore It had been overs: fallen by thirst on route,
and disputar ally of role The giants
Mouator On the mm, wemailing vil
Shakespeare and everything
glost dig near Latchsworth, "Pro-
Pro-The Iron Age folk had built heavy Industries such as stan babin part of the ubia of an ost a shoped enclosure surround and whip buliding
Iron Age ox, I should se
PEYR to doin the Up left by two deep chicho and a day I pick list of Wakes. The dingers room for the followers to develop up blus of Tron Age court found out what it was | the light Indurtefensanta
on. Some Arce: chapt all for yet, but they have avga had probably cheweck
of one for his thrown
The hole
Tensheally uncovered sections
to Thow 100, what bort of things
WHICH REALLY TASTE
LIKE FRESH PEACHES.