It is very gratifying to see that the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Studies Series has indeed become a Series since our first volume appeared in 2005. The publication of Stanley Kwan’s memoirs brings our total to six — and there are significantly more than that in various stages of consideration and production.

Originally writing for his family, friends and relatives, Mr. Kwan was happily persuaded to consider reaching a wider audience. A Chinese version was produced in 1999 in Canada, and I am delighted to present here a re-written and fuller version in English, produced with the collaboration and assistance...

Some of the most influential and important people in our world are the quiet, thoughtful ones who see the need for a change or an innovation and set about bringing it into being. One of these people is Stanley Kwan, the creator of the Hang Seng Index, one of the key tools of financial information in Hong Kong, not just for Hong Kong, but also for the world.

Hong Kong has evolved since the end of World War II from a colonial port on the China coast into a major centre of the global economy. Social and cultural development has...

My earliest memories of the family house were the four large characters of our household name — Kwan Chung Hao Tong — in sweeping brush strokes. Written in gold on a five-foot-long black wood panel, the characters hung high in the middle of our family hall. Household names traditionally highlighted each family’s values and aspirations, and ours were chung and hao — loyalty to the emperor and filial piety. Our household was thus the “Kwan Family Hall of Loyalty and Filial Piety,” and these words haunted me as I was growing up.

Mindful of our family values, I was properly deferential towards my...

During the early stages of the Anti-Japanese War, the British believed that Hong Kong, like Singapore, was “an impregnable fortress” and that as long as Britain remained neutral, Japan would not attack Hong Kong. It took the defeat of the Allied forces on the European continent and the formation of the Germany-Italy-Japan Axis in 1940 to prompt the British into bolstering the defences of these Far East bastions of their empire.

The year 1941 started optimistically with the centennial commemorations of the founding of Hong Kong on 26 January 1841, when a British naval landing party hoisted the Union Jack...

On 30 August 1945, the British Pacific Fleet under Rear Admiral Cecil Harcourt dropped anchor in Victoria Harbour, one day before Chiang Kai-shek ordered his 13th Army to march towards Hong Kong and reclaim the former British colony. The Japanese garrison offered no resistance and British marines soon took over all the strategic points on Hong Kong Island, and in Kowloon and the New Territories. The British established an interim government in the war-torn territory, freeing expatriate soldiers and civilians interned during the Japanese occupation, and rounding up Japanese soldiers for repatriation. Preoccupied with the civil war and giving in...

On a clear Monday morning in early December 1961, I took a two-hour leave from my job at the American Consulate General and walked down Garden Road to Queen’s Road Central for an interview with Lee Quo Wei, manager of Hang Seng Bank. Wearing my best dark-grey suit with a red tie and buoyed by the cool morning breeze, I was in a good mood and felt quite confident about my chances.

The consulate compound was on “Government Hill” and on stepping outside I was in the heart of the colonial government. Behind the consulate was the Government House, the...

Although my work at Hang Seng Bank did not involve China until much later, I tried to keep up with developments in New China through the news. However, throughout the 1950s and 1960s most of my friends and relatives would avoid talking about politics when we met. We had little to discuss about Hong Kong since the colonial government set all the policies and there were no elections and few dissenting voices. If we talked about mainland China, any discussion would inevitably lead to heated debates, with some staunchly supporting the PRC, right or wrong; and the others, fiercely anti-communist,...

I had considered the possibility of emigration during various periods in my life: first during the 1950s when political campaigns ravaged the Mainland, and later in 1967 when demonstrations turned violent in Hong Kong. On both occasions I had chosen to remain in Hong Kong, and I was able to advance my career as the economy rebounded and prospered.

When Sino-British negotiations started in 1983, I again thought about emigrating. Although I wanted to stay in Hong Kong to witness its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 — which had been the dream of my youth — I felt uneasy about the...