SECTION ONE
BRITISH INCIVILITY TO THE CHINESE
19
No single influence has contributed so largely towards
anti-British feeling among the Chinese of Hong Kong and South China
as the incivility of British people in Hong Kong to the Asiatic.
Orientals from other parts of China, from Malaya and from India,
have told me the same holds true in these other parts of the East.
But I am writing from firsthand experience, and in this section I
shall confine myself almost exclusively to the subject of anti-
British feeling among the Chinese arising from British incivility
to them in Hong Kong. I have heard Chinese from every walk of life
express themselves on this subject a Foreign Linister, a former
Ambassador to London, Government officials of to-day, medical men,
lawyers, a well-known economist, educationalists, financiers,
merchants, bankers, housewives, university undergraduates, clerks,
school students, and even house-servants, office boys and coolies –
and, without exception, their antagonism to the British could be put
down, more than to any other factor or combination of factors, to
incivility at the hands of British people.
To give a clear idea of my meuning, may I cite and comment
on a few cases out of hundreds that have come to my notice.
Incident 1: Shortly before the War in the Far East I met a Chinese
headmaster at one of the leading British banks in Hong Kong. While
Er. Wong and I were waiting for the return of one of the bank
officials, our attention was drawn to a beautifully dressed Chinese
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