ENG-1988 — Page 19

STATE OF THE ARTS

7

Without this initiative, taken by the second postwar Governor, Sir Alexander Grantham, Hong Kong would have been condemned as the most artistically sterile, soul-less and mercenary city in the world.

If Hong Kong looks back on a long history of cultural neglect, that is because the administrators of the Ching (Qing) dynasty saw no use for the arts; its small trade and sea-oriented population were people of simple tastes, with a little piracy thrown in to provide the spice of life.

Looking back through the historical record, we see there was little to distinguish our early inhabitants from other coastal dwellers of southern China. The archaeological artifacts that survive from these earliest years show the barest concession to artistic design - functional pots and bowls, unglazed and with incised simple geometric patterns, simple tools, but little that would bring the world beating a path to our doors. If they do so today, it is for other reasons.

Even the discovery of a cruciform Han dynasty tomb in a hillside at Li Cheng Uk in 1954, rich in pottery and funerary ware, did little to embellish the cultural record, as many hundreds of similar tombs were discovered in parts of South China. There were no bronze flying horses, jade suits stitched with gold threads or gilt chariots, but just enough artifacts to satisfy an itinerant hungry ghost, visiting an old haunt, that he had not been forgotten.

Historians will remind us that centuries later, royalty did visit our shores – albeit on the run from the Mongol invaders; he was a young nephew of the last of the Sung emperors. We still possess the stone which testifies to that visit - the Sung Wong Toi, or terrace of the Sung Emperor. But a royal city Hong Kong was not destined to be.

A Million Lights

An ancient seer once predicted that one day a million lights would glow on the island. But when British traders, evicted from Canton and Macau by an irate imperial Commissioner Lin Tse-hsu, took refuge here in 1841, Lord Palmerston could find no better description for it than 'a barren rock with hardly a house on it.'

What existed in the form of indigenous culture at that time can only be guessed. While a thriving school of Western painters had taken root in Macau and Canton, influenced by the visits of early British and European artists, including Thomas and William Daniell, William Alexander (with the Macartney mission in 1793) and George Chinnery (1825-1852), Hong Kong had no artists of its own. Chinnery spent a mere six months in the new colony and hated it, returning to the peace of Macau. Many others, however, moved from Canton to Hong Kong with the British, among them Lamqua, a brother, Tingqua, and the Portuguese artist, Marciano Baptista. These and other artists provide us with the only pictures of Hong Kong's early years.

With a few exceptions, the cult died out when photography arrived. Calligraphy flourished in nearby Canton - Commissioner Lin was an exponent of the art – but if there were any talented men of the brush and palette in Hong Kong then, their works are not known.

Apart from the occasional dragon or lion dance and a festive performance of traditional Cantonese opera and the itinerant story teller, Hong Kong was for many years too poor to afford a thriving community of artists. The money in those early colonial years was concentrated in a few hands whose one concession to artistic taste was the stately com- pradoric style of architecture which graced many of Hong Kong's earliest residences.

For these merchant grandees and their ladies, our city fathers erected a majestic City Hall in Central District; in front of it one of our early Taipans erected a graceful fountain resting