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1.
"SOMETHING ABOUT KAIFONG."
(The revised version of a talk originally given
to the Rotary Club of Hong Kong on 22nd May 1951).
Most of my talk today will be about the recently developed Kaifong Welfare Associations, and two other similar bodies, in the urban areas of Hong Kong and Kowloon. We shall not have the time, nor indeed would I be any use as a guide, to look at any developments in the New Territories. It is also with considerable regret that I shall have to confine myself to merely mentioning the hundred-year-old but still outstandingly enthusiastic Stanley Land and Sea Citizens' Association.
2. I must, however, start with some generalisations about the old traditional kaifong which have still left their mark even on present-day urban Hong Kong. We shall then turn to the new Kaifong Welfare Associations, and the work which they are setting out to do. Finally I will offer for your consideration my own suggestions as to why these new organisations are of such importance to everyone who lives or works in Hong Kong, wherever his ancestral or father's home may be. In this talk I have deliberately cut out practically all reference to any part which the Social Welfare Office may have played or may be playing. If the genuine Kaifong Welfare Associations are to go on from success to success they will more and more have to stand on their own feet. They must continue to be independent bodies concentrating all their energies on practical and constructive welfare work for their own districts. They will have failed if they become the tools of officialdom. They will have failed if they come to be regarded primarily as useful pathways for social climbers. They will have done worse than fail, they will become a danger to Hong Kong, if they become the dupes or instruments of racketeers or political intriguers. My job and the job of my office has therefore only been to help prime the pump correctly, not to work it. It is the pump itself and the men who have already started to work it on the right lines that really matter. It is about them that I am going to talk.
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3. Kaifong under one name or another are said to have been known in Chiną for a very long time, and they have existed in at least parts of Hong Kong at various stages throughout the Colony's history. The word "kaifong" is a Cantonese collective name for the residents of a particular street or locality. A kaifong does not have to be and indeed usually used not to be a formally constituted residents' association. But at its best a kaifong was always something much more than just a chance collection of neighbours. It had its own loaders who were neither elected nor appointed but who just naturally came to the fore whether for the good or for the ill of their community. Either way, when a kaifong and its leaders were strong they tended to have very great unofficial power, so that even a district magistrate a pointed in the Emperor's name would think twice before taking any important action without consulting the leaders. At this point it is convenient to drop any further attempts at a verbal distinction between a kaifong and its leaders. In the eyes of the public the leaders were for all practical purposes the kaifong, and it is in this sense that I shall now use the word kaifong, until we come to discussing the new Kaifong Welfare Associations.
There
4. The kaifong of old were not just a kind of unofficial advisory council or Council of Elders. They had very practical responsibilities too. was for instance the public welfare work which many of them traditionally undertook in the way of repairing bridges, mending roads, providing free medical aid for the poor, and providing free coffin services for the destitute dead. Even during Hong Kong's history that tradition of free medical aid remained strong for many years, whatever individual kaifong might flourish or wither away. For example the majority of the public dispensaries now run by the medical department were originally built by local kaifong, and were for a long time also financed and run by them in consultation with the Secretary for Chinese Affairs.