Directory_and_Chronicle_1939 — Page 882

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HONGKONG

Under the auspices of the Hongkong Jockey Club pony racing is con- ducted in the Colony. The annual meeting which lasts five days is generally arranged to take place about a fortnight after Chinese New Year. After the annual meeting a number of "extra" meetings are held, there being about twenty race days in the year not including the annual meeting. Steeple- chasing was introduced into the Colony a few years ago and the meetings of the Fanling Hunt Club are now very popular. One meeting a month is held except during July and August when it is too hot for racing.

Athletic sports are held every year by the residents, schools, and the garrison and great interest is shown by the public. Football is far and away the most popular form of sport as it has in recent years got a grip on the Chinese public. In summer swimming sports are held at regular intervals at the Vic- toria Recreation Club and at a number of Chinese swimming clubs at North Point. Water Polo is fast becoming the most popular form of summer sport. There is a Philharmonic Society (resuscitated in 1922) and also an Amateur Dramatic Club, the members of which give occasional performances in the Theatre Royal during the season. Several large and well equipped cinema theatres showing talking pictures and three large Chinese Theatres, where the Chinese drama is almost constantly on view, are always well attended.

There are four daily papers published in English: the Hongkong Daily Press and the South China Morning Post, which appear in the morning; the China Mail and the Hongkong Telegraph, issued in the evening. There are three weekly papers-the Hongkong Weekly Press and China Overland Trade Report, the Overland China Mail, and the Sunday Herald. The Directory and Chronicle for China, Japan, Malaya, &c., has been issued annually since 1863 from the Daily Press Office. The native Press consists of about a dozen papers. The Government Gazette is published once a week.

There are several good hotels in Victoria, the leading ones in the city being the Hong Kong Hotel and The Gloucester, a fine modern building opened in 1932. On the other side of the island a hotel at Repulse Bay was opened on New Year's Day, 1920, by the, Governor, H. E. Sir Reginald Stubbs in Kowloon there are the Station Hotel, the Palace Hotel, and the Kowloon Hotel, while erection on Salisbury Road, by

Road, by the Hong- kong - Shanghai Hotels Co., Ltd., of a hotel on the most up to - date lines and containing extensive accommodation,

called the Peninsula Hotel, gives Hongkong the honour of having the largest hotel in the Orient. The Peninsula Hotel was opened in December, 1928, by the Hon. Mr. W. T. Southorn, at that time the acting governor.

INDUSTRIES

The Colony possesses a large sugar refinery, shipbuilding yards (described below), a cement works, a rope works, many Chinese knitting factories, a soap and perfumery factory, glass blowing establishments, cigar and cigarette fac- tories of modern type, native factories for the preparation for export of vermil- lion, soy, baskets and rattan ware, numerous native boat building yards and granite quarries, etc. A Dairy Farm Company, under European supervision, also controls an extensive ice factory. The Colonial Government owns the British section of a single line railway to Canton.

The works of the Hongkong and China Gas Company are situated at West Point and at Yaumati, and those of the Hongkong Electric Company at North Point. A new power-station for the Electric Company was built on a site reclaimed from the sea for this purpose. The city is illuminated by electric light, which was introduced at the end of 1890. Electricity is supplied in Kowloon by the China Light and Power Co., Ltd.