Feeling the Stones
Feeling the Stones: Reminiscences by David Akers-Jones
Reminiscences by David Akers-Jones
Copyright Date: 2004
Published by: Hong Kong University Press
Pages: 308
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2jbz2b
Search for reviews of this book
Book Info
Feeling the Stones
Book Description:

Sir David Akers-Jones (Zhong Yat-kit) has been a major figure in the life and government of Hong Kong for many years. In this book he writes with a light and distinctive touch about his life, focusing more on the human than the administrative, but nonetheless providing many insights into the recent history of Hong Kong. The story starts with his leaving the Sussex Downs to serve as a young Merchant Navy officer in the last years of World War II. As his ships tramped around the ports of South East Asia, his life-long enthusiasm for Asia was born and, talking with the seamen, his facility with Asian languages. But most of the story takes place in Hong Kong and China, and especially in the New Territories where he spent a large part of his career. There, as development spread from the packed streets of Kowloon to the paddy fields, he developed the trust and affection for the Chinese people of Hong Kong that has been such a characteristic and formative part of his attitude to Hong Kong and its future. Growing out of his work for the Yuen Long football team, Sir David became an active participant in the international organization of soccer. This led to opportunities for wide travel in China and exceptional opportunities to learn directly about the People's Republic, experiences that set him apart from his colleagues in the colonial administration. These experiences give a distinctive perspective to his account of the events leading up to 1997 and the controversies of that period. This is a book for everyone with an interest in the recent history of Hong Kong and in an exceptional man who played a major part in that history as he ploughed a distinctive and individual, and sometimes controversial, path from District Officer to Acting Governor to Hong Kong Affairs Advisor.

eISBN: 978-988-220-131-6
Subjects: History
You do not have access to this book on JSTOR. Try logging in through your institution for access.
Log in to your personal account or through your institution.
Table of Contents
Export Selected Citations Export to NoodleTools Export to RefWorks Export to EasyBib Export a RIS file (For EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager, Zotero, Mendeley...) Export a Text file (For BibTex)
Select / Unselect all
  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii)
  3. Foreword
    Foreword (pp. ix-x)
    Lord Wilson of Tillyorn

    Hong Kong has been very fortunate in its civil servants, both Hong Kong Chinese and expatriates. They form one of the pillars of the phenomenal success of the territory since the end of the Second World War. Another even more substantial pillar has of course been the sheer energy and drive of the Chinese people of Hong Kong, both those born there and those who came from Mainland China at times of political upheaval north of the border.

    Allowing vigour, determination and the urge to better one’s lot to take a productive course is a key attribute of good government....

  4. Preface
    Preface (pp. xi-xiv)
    David Akers-Jones
  5. Prologue
    Prologue (pp. 1-8)

    In January 1945 I left the woods, the quiet villages, the soothing curves of the South Downs, seventeen years old, still a schoolboy self-conscious in a handsome gold-buttoned bridge coat which reached below my knees. The train rattled and swayed through the cold, bleak night, passing through the dim orange gloom of stations with names removed to fool invading armies, until with the coming of day we arrived, tired, at grey, wintry, war-time Hull.

    I had grown up in a quiet country village in Sussex and attended the local church primary school. As the clouds of war gathered, my father...

  6. 1 Arrival
    1 Arrival (pp. 9-12)

    My wife and I and our baby son arrived in Hong Kong one blazing hot summer morning in 1957, after a three-day flight from England which ended with the plane skimming over the hills of Kowloon, swooping swiftly down to the runway and bumping past traffic waiting at a level crossing for the plane to land. We crossed the harbour by launch and saw for the first time the steep hillsides, the mountains, the blue waters of the harbour and the greying buildings of the city. Hong Kong was struggling twelve years after the war to adjust to the fate...

  7. 2 The New Territory
    2 The New Territory (pp. 13-18)

    Above the dry windblown grass, the humped summits of surrounding hills and grey lichen-covered rocks, a yellow biplane droned against towering clouds and sky. A weighted pennant fluttered to the ground, a message to say ‘You have been posted to the New Territories as District Officer’.

    When this news came we were staying in a lonely stone hut, one of a number of scattered holiday homes for missionaries high on Hong Kong’s largest island, Lantau. A friend, flying in a Tiger Moth biplane, had spotted us and thrown down his exciting news. We read the scribbled note as the yellow...

  8. 3 Tsuen Wan and the Islands, 1959–1961
    3 Tsuen Wan and the Islands, 1959–1961 (pp. 19-34)

    Tsuen Wan was over the hills and along the coast west of Kowloon. White-walled villages were hidden in valleys; huts and factories straggled up the hillsides; families lived on tiny sampans at anchor in the bay, and vegetables were grown anywhere not immediately wanted for living and working. From 1959 we lived in Tsuen Wan for just under a year, while the incumbent District Officer, Hal Miller (later Sir Hal Miller, a Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Conservative Party), returned to England.

    The resettlement of urban squatters from Kowloon into seven-storey grey barracks of concrete had begun. These...

  9. 4 Yuen Long, 1962–1967
    4 Yuen Long, 1962–1967 (pp. 35-50)

    Yuen Long was known for its proud and independent spirit and had fought with determination, but with hopelessly inadequate weapons, as the British troops advanced westwards across the territory in 1899. It was a district of many villages, a central market town, rice fields, fishponds of grey mullet, oyster beds along the coast, and a fairy-tale history which linked the oldest group of villages to a Sung princess.

    Hong Kong was always short of water, but there was plenty to be had north of the border in the rivers which stretched for hundreds of miles inland from the Pearl River...

  10. 5 Seeds of Reform
    5 Seeds of Reform (pp. 51-60)

    Administrative officers in the colonial service were formerly known, diminutively, as Cadets, and before leaving for Hong Kong, or after a few years there, were sent on a specially designed course at Cambridge University. I had missed this, but it was agreed that it would be good for my soul to get away for a bit. Because of the years already spent in district work I asked to go to Oxford to make a special study of local government under the supervision of Professor Bryan Keith-Lucas, an authority on comparative local government who had been greatly involved in advising on...

  11. 6 The Cultural Revolution
    6 The Cultural Revolution (pp. 61-66)

    In 1967 the years of the Cultural Revolution began traumatically. We watched the British Consul in Macao being made to stand in the burning sun to endure the vilification of the masses He was then withdrawn from Macao to Hong Kong, never to return. Corpses with their hands bound floated down the Pearl River, and the strikes and riots of the Cultural Revolution spread to Hong Kong. There were marches to Government House, vehement denunciations of the British and attempts to force the government to capitulate. Mobs surged out of crowded resettlement estates followed by tear gas volleys and baton...

  12. 7 Principal Assistant Colonial Secretary (Lands)
    7 Principal Assistant Colonial Secretary (Lands) (pp. 67-74)

    With the gradual return of confidence after the stress and tension of 1967, Hong Kong property prices began to rise. My masters judged it was time to move me away from rural politics and development and crises on the border to Hong Kong Island, away from people to paper, to files, minutes, memoranda and the preparation of a stream of papers for the weekly meeting of the Governor’s Executive Council — Hong Kong’s Cabinet. It was before the Colonial Secretary, sensitive to the changing mood, changed his title to the more politically correct Chief Secretary, and senior officials, who had...

  13. 8 A Visit to China in 1973: FIFA
    8 A Visit to China in 1973: FIFA (pp. 75-86)

    A desire to know more and to understand better the complexity of Hong Kong’s swirling, extraordinary life had led me to follow an opportunity to become involved in the intricacies of the world of soccer, its players, officials and local and international politics. Study of the language had also led me into history and a growing desire to delve more deeply, to discover China at first hand, to know more about the great country to our north. I never felt that we had ‘gone native’ as the whispered word has it, but perhaps that’s how we looked to those who...

  14. 9 China and FIFA: The End of Waiting
    9 China and FIFA: The End of Waiting (pp. 87-90)

    In the seventies, soccer was still the principal spectator sport in Hong Kong and key matches would attract many thousands on their days off. When there was time I joined the crowds in the stands on Boundary Street. It gave me an opportunity to learn about another part of Hong Kong life. This link with football had led to my visit to China, and in my role as vice president of the Hong Kong Football Association I became a delegate to the Congress of the Federation of International Football Associations, FIFA, where the question of China’s entry was voted upon....

  15. 10 Back to the Land
    10 Back to the Land (pp. 91-96)

    A hundred years ago the markets and villages of the New Territories were linked by tracks, the more important flagged with great slabs of granite, climbing over the mountains, through the paddy fields and along the shoreline. There were no carriages, wagons or carts—no vehicles—and therefore nothing which could turn a cart track or a bridle path into a road. To make the New Territories more accessible, more governable, roads had to be pushed out along the coast to the west and, most important, to the north over a pass in the hills to Tai Po, which in...

  16. 11 Breaking Down the Fences
    11 Breaking Down the Fences (pp. 97-104)

    The river selected by the Colonial Secretary, Stewart Lockhart, in 1898 to mark the limit of Britain’s ‘new territory’ intrusion into China starts as a stream in the mountains at the eastern end of the boundary. In 1976 its upper stony course meandered down past an abandoned lead mine and through paddy fields and quiet grey-brick villages until it reached the sea in the west. It passed under the rusting iron girders of a Bailey bridge, so called after its inventor, designed to be thrown quickly across rivers for advancing armies, but now over which barrows of vegetables were daily...

  17. 12 The Expiring Lease
    12 The Expiring Lease (pp. 105-112)

    Development, get up and go, has been an abiding theme in the life of Hong Kong from the moment on a cold winter morning of 26 January 1841 when Captain Elliot took possession. There was nowhere to live, but within a matter of months the first houses and offices had been built along the foreshore. Behind them, steep, treeless hillsides strewn with huge granite boulders reached up to the skyline ridge of the island. A trace, following a track along the foreshore, was laid out for the Queen’s Road whose winding route, now far from the waters of the harbour,...

  18. 13 ‘Hong Kong People Ruling Hong Kong’
    13 ‘Hong Kong People Ruling Hong Kong’ (pp. 113-120)

    Before deciding with the support of his Executive Council to embark upon his visionary programme to build homes for one and a half million people in ten years, Sir Murray MacLehose had remarked that the shortage of decent housing was the biggest single source of unhappiness in Hong Kong. Now this source of unhappiness was to be removed. But it was not simply a question of housing; schools, police and fire stations, clinics, shopping centres and markets, parks and playgrounds, all these had to be provided if the people were to be persuaded to leave the familiar environment of Hong...

  19. 14 Behind the Headlines
    14 Behind the Headlines (pp. 121-126)

    The rubric ‘positive non-intervention’ is much used to describe Hong Kong’s economic philosophy. It came from Sir Philip Haddon-Cave, Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary from 1971 to 1981. However, it is forgotten by those who parrot it that Haddon-Cave qualified his words with the caveat that in times of dire necessity, the rule should not put the economy in a straitjacket. Each year his annual budget address to the Legislative Council had us shifting wearily in our seats for between three and four hours as he justified with labyrinthine analysis the short-term and long-term aspects of government finances and prospects for...

  20. 15 Xiamen
    15 Xiamen (pp. 127-132)

    Our first visit to China had taken place in 1973. Later, in the seventies, I visited the fast-developing city of Shenzhen, on the other side of the river from Hong Kong, and accompanied the Hong Kong soccer team to Guangzhou for the inaugural football match of what was to become an annual event. The match took on a greater significance as it marked the return to normalisation of relations between the ordinary people of Hong Kong and the rest of Guangdong. The mostly male spectators packed the stadium wearing the blue jacket and caps of the past, all smoking so...

  21. 16 The Beginning of Negotiations
    16 The Beginning of Negotiations (pp. 133-144)

    The departure and arrival of Governors are punctuation marks in the life of a colony; you are never quite sure what the next man will be like. There is certain to be a change of style, and no Governor is like another. Just as in elected governments, the civil servants provide continuity and for better or worse put a brake on revolutionary change; and perhaps what is more important, they provide a collective memory, an invaluable aid when contemplating dramatic changes in policy. Each of Hong Kong’s Governors, and now Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, could not have been more different...

  22. 17 Negotiations Concluded, 1983–1985
    17 Negotiations Concluded, 1983–1985 (pp. 145-150)

    In December 1983 the Governor and Executive Councillors travelled to London without his officials for an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe, Sir Percy Cradock, and other ministers and officials, to discuss the impasse the negotiations about the future had reached.

    Time was running out. In September 1984, if no agreement were reached, China’s own twenty-point plan for Hong Kong, which had already been published, would be implemented. The twenty points were seductive but contained nothing on the detail of Hong Kong’s legal system and governance, its economy and social system, and no...

  23. 18 Signatures and Celebrations
    18 Signatures and Celebrations (pp. 151-156)

    Throughout the long, hot, summer days of 1984 discussion about the agreement with China had continued in Executive Council, and at times less formally around the table in Government House. The agreement was to take the form of a declaration by both governments, followed by an elaboration of China’s basic policies towards Hong Kong to be contained in a number of annexes.

    We were all caught up in the drama of those days of secrecy as the text and its annexes emerged section by section after the drafts had been passed round from Hong Kong to London and Beijing and...

  24. 19 Chief Secretary
    19 Chief Secretary (pp. 157-164)

    The announcement that I was to succeed Philip Haddon-Cave as Chief Secretary at the beginning of June 1985 brought more than twenty years of life in the New Territories to an end. Unlike my colleagues I had never cut my teeth on the cloistered disciplines of establishment, economics and finance, and there was, no doubt, some muttering in the corridors about the unusualness of my appointment.

    We would have to leave Island House, which had been our home for twelve years. It had been home for the officer responsible for the government of the New Territories and its affairs since...

  25. 20 A Fresh Chapter Begins
    20 A Fresh Chapter Begins (pp. 165-172)

    In the months and years following the signing of the agreement the Governor continued his frequent travels to London and Beijing, forcefully putting his point of view on the many questions raised in its implementation. Each time he left, as Chief Secretary and his deputy I took over as Acting Governor, and when he was away I chaired the meetings of Executive Council and was president of the Legislative Council.

    Meetings of the Executive Council took place in the government secretariat in an unadorned room around a long marmalade-coloured teak wood table, with no distracting pictures on the walls, no...

  26. 21 Light and Nuclear Power
    21 Light and Nuclear Power (pp. 173-178)

    There were other more practical happenings to scratch the nerves of an already anxious community. Two measures of the growth of Hong Kong are the need for more and more water and the building of power stations. Factories work around the clock, and the lights of office towers burn into the night as analysts and others work midway between the financial markets of America and Europe. The brilliant shop signs of the crowded streets are symbols of a city that never seems to sleep. The two power companies, Hong Kong Electric and China Light and Power, which supply Hong Kong...

  27. 22 Loss of Sir Edward Youde
    22 Loss of Sir Edward Youde (pp. 179-184)

    On Friday, 6 December 1986, a fine peaceful morning in early winter, Emily Lau, a journalist and contributor to the Far Eastern Economic Review and later a popularly elected Legislative Councillor known for her sharp and wide-ranging criticism, had come to breakfast at Victoria House. We were sitting looking out across the harbour quietly chatting about current affairs when the phone rang. My personal assistant asked me to come to the office immediately as news had come that Sir Edward Youde, who was on a visit to Beijing, had died in his sleep at the residence of the Ambassador, Sir...

  28. 23 The Walled City
    23 The Walled City (pp. 185-188)

    Now that we were on speaking terms with China and before the arrival of David Wilson there was an opportunity to solve, thankfully for the last time, the vexed question of the Kowloon Walled City. Before the signing of the lease of the new territory in 1898, the northern half of the Kowloon Peninsula was governed and administered by the Chinese. So, too, were the surrounding hills, the spectacular rocky feature resembling a crouching lion, Lion Rock, and the land and villages surrounding the bays to the east and west of the peninsula. This farmland was dotted with tightly clustered...

  29. 24 The Arrival of Sir David Wilson and Retirement
    24 The Arrival of Sir David Wilson and Retirement (pp. 189-196)

    The first months of Hong Kong’s year pass quickly. Celebrations for the New Year, reckoned by the lunar months in January or February, follow the winding-down of business and the settling of accounts. Family reunions send hundreds of thousands away from Hong Kong to visit their relatives in their native villages in the mainland; others tour scenic spots in China and the world. Workers from Chinese restaurants in Europe return to their native villages in the New Territories. Workmen down tools, quiet descends on building sites, barges and boats are docked, ships sail away, and for once the sea is...

  30. 25 A New Home
    25 A New Home (pp. 197-200)

    It had been arranged that I would remain as Sir David Wilson’s adviser for six months after his arrival, but we needed to move out of the house provided by the government into a home of our own. I had earlier said to Sir Edward Youde, when he told me that I must follow the rules and retire at sixty, that I intended to stay in Hong Kong. Few, if any, civil servants had had a career similar to mine. For us it had been normal to be posted from one appointment to another, not to spend too long in...

  31. 26 A Change of Life: 1989
    26 A Change of Life: 1989 (pp. 201-204)

    Dragon View was a delight, perched on its hillside spur above the narrow Castle Peak Road, which passed between it and the sea. It was half-hidden by the overhanging branches of two sprawling Flame of the Forest trees (Delonix regia) whose vivid scarlet flowers in the spring announce the return of the sun to the northern tropics. Through the house, the sudden vista of the sea, the steep, mountainous islands beyond and distant Hong Kong brought a gasp of delight from visitors. The ground sloped steeply upward behind the house through dark woodland, home for snakes and spiders, with long...

  32. 27 Political Development 1987–1990: Tiananmen and the Boat People
    27 Political Development 1987–1990: Tiananmen and the Boat People (pp. 205-210)

    When Sir David Wilson arrived in 1987, the Green Paper review of Hong Kong’s political system had just been published in an atmosphere unfavourable to bold initiatives. China had said that anything unacceptable to China and not in conformity with the Basic Law was doomed not to survive the transfer of sovereignty. The public response to the review was muted except from the few who were especially interested in political development. The majority preferred to keep well away from politics. The main point at issue concentrated on whether Hong Kong should have elections in 1988, before the drafting of the...

  33. 28 Sir David Wilson
    28 Sir David Wilson (pp. 211-216)

    Each Governor had his style, and just as each governorship was distinguished by the problems and anxieties of the day, so the solutions depended on the Governor’s particular personality and leadership qualities. Sir David Wilson, who was Governor now, inherited a different and difficult set of problems just two years into his governorship.

    He brought with him a quiet, thoughtful style and the calm and diplomacy needed to balance the sometimes conflicting demands of the administration of Hong Kong with the need to cooperate with China. The explosion of discontent and dissatisfaction in Beijing in Tiananmen took place in the...

  34. 29 Another Voice
    29 Another Voice (pp. 217-228)

    The Governor’s launch, the Lady Maurine, tiny among the fire floats squirting their fountains, edged across the harbour. At the quayside behind the Queen’s Pier, once again the customary troops and bands were waiting, swords poised to salute and bayonets glittering; arms were presented with a smart clatter and councillors and their ladies were introduced. But no more white drill, epaulettes and fluttering feathers of office, no more morning dress; the Governor, to mark the change from official to politician, wore a suit like the rest of us. It was the beginning of the end of the old colony: time...

  35. 30 The Years Between, 1992–1997
    30 The Years Between, 1992–1997 (pp. 229-234)

    The disagreement over the changes to the electoral system had unhappy consequences. China took the dispute so seriously that threats were made not only to derail the ‘through train’ but that contracts and agreements entered into by the government before the transfer would have to be re-examined after. On reflection it was realised that this would damage both Hong Kong’s and China’s interests and the threat was allowed quietly to evaporate, but not before it sent the stock market into pessimistic decline.

    The Jardine Group, however, was singled out for its rumoured support for Mr Patten and for earlier shifting...

  36. 31 Defamation and the ‘Second Stove’
    31 Defamation and the ‘Second Stove’ (pp. 235-238)

    Sunday was a quiet day at Dragon View; our domestic helpers usually went to early church and then on to meet their friends. Most unusually, on Sunday, 30 January 1994, instead of the clang of the ship’s bell at the gate at the bottom of the steep flight of steps leading to the house, the front door gong chimed. We opened the door and immediately a camera started fast-ratchetting and two roughly dressed European men confronted us. I exclaimed angrily and asked them what they wanted, and attempted to wrestle the camera away from the shorter of the two. My...

  37. 32 Elections and the Second Stove Lights Up
    32 Elections and the Second Stove Lights Up (pp. 239-244)

    Despite the outrage of China and the warnings from those in Hong Kong who knew better, Legislative Council elections were held in 1995 under the revised legislation of the Patten plan. This created new large constituencies and gave two votes to a large segment of the electorate, as well as creating an electoral college which was substantially different from the one described in the Qian–Hurd letters. The Democrats walked away with a majority of the seats and remained the largest single party in the legislature until the end of the century. They positioned themselves as critics of the government,...

  38. 33 Countdown
    33 Countdown (pp. 245-252)

    Following the election of the Provisional Legislature to take over the reins on 1 July, after the handover and until the fully constitutionally elected Legislative Council could take office, the six months leading to 30 June 1997 were a curious interregnum. It seemed strange and lacking in concern that we should be carrying on just as normal, as though the great change of rulers were not about to take place. It was as though we ought to feel differently on 1 July, as though we should now be walking on tiptoe, and, if the international media were to be believed,...

  39. 34 Settling Down
    34 Settling Down (pp. 253-262)

    Despite all the gloomy predictions, and the fear expressed by the foreign media and political commentators that the ‘Reds’ would take over, the PLA would march in, communist rule would follow, and everything built up over a century and a half of being a colony would collapse or be removed, the streets of Hong Kong did not look any different in those days after the handover than they looked before. There were no horseback victory parades such as had accompanied the Japanese arrival after defeating the British forces in 1941: there was not a soldier in sight. There was no...

  40. 35 Weather Report
    35 Weather Report (pp. 263-270)

    President Jiang Zemin addressed the 15th Party Congress of the People’s Republic of China on 12 September 1997 as follows: ‘China is in the primary stage of socialism. Correcting the erroneous concepts of the past is a new endeavour. We have done what was never mentioned by Marx, never undertaken by our predecessors and never attempted in any socialist country. We can only learn from practice, feeling our way as we go.’ Chairman Deng put it more colourfully when he said it was like crossing a river feeling the stones with your feet.

    Since these words were spoken, the speed...

  41. Envoi
    Envoi (pp. 271-274)

    Hong Kong has been very fortunate in its civil servants, both Hong Kong Chinese and expatriates. They form one of the pillars of the phenomenal success of the territory since the end of the Second World War. Another even more substantial pillar has of course been the sheer energy and drive of the Chinese people of Hong Kong, both those born there and those who came from Mainland China at times of political upheaval north of the border.

    Allowing vigour, determination and the urge to better one’s lot to take a productive course is a key attribute of good government....

  42. Index
    Index (pp. 275-278)
  43. [Illustrations]
    [Illustrations] (pp. None)
Hong Kong University Press logo