ENG-1958 — Page 369

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312

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

From 1930 water was conveyed to Hong Kong from the slopes of Tai Mo Shan, the highest mountain in the New Territories, but even with this, supplies remained inadequate, and in 1935-6 the same area was further developed by the construction of the Jubilee Reservoir, the largest yet built in the Colony. In 1957 another reservoir, still larger, was completed at Tai Lam Chung, and work has started on the building of yet another at Shek Pik in Lantau.

The Colony's earliest hospitals were run by missionary bodies, as indeed are a number at the present time. The first Government hospital was the Civil Hospital, founded in 1859. Part of its large old-fashioned buildings is still in use, and on the remainder of the original site today stands the spacious and modern Tsan Yuk Maternity Hospital, opened in 1955. The Kowloon Hospital was opened in 1925, and the Queen Mary Hospital, one of the largest and most up-to-date in Asia, in 1937. Construction has started upon a new 1,300-bed hospital in Kowloon. The provision of adequate medical facilities at times of refugee influx has been one of Hong Kong's major problems, only surpassed by the problem of water, and surmounted only by the combined efforts of the Government and unofficial organizations.

The need to safeguard fishing junks and other small craft from destruction by typhoons was met by the construction of large typhoon shelters on both sides of the harbour. One of the main functions of the Royal Observatory, founded in Kowloon in 1883, was to give reliable forecasts of the approach of typhoons, a function which increased in importance with the development of air transport, which in Hong Kong may be said to date from the laying-out of Kai Tak Airport in 1932.

THE CHINESE REVOLUTION AND WORLD WAR

In 1911 the Manchu dynasty fell, and was replaced by a Republic, guided by Sun Yat-sen, whose political thinking had been deeply influenced by his contacts with British institutions and ways of thought while a student in Hong Kong. During the events leading to the overthrow of the dynasty many refugees sought sanctuary in Hong Kong, using the Colony's Chinese news- papers as a vehicle for conveying their ideas into China.