Swift, efficient transport connections between Hong Kong’s various hinterlands are now taken for granted; air travel and high-speed railway networks link locations along the China coast – including both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
But until the widespread advent of direct air services from Southeast Asia throughout the 1980s, relatively small-scale passenger vessel services enabled overseas Chinese with ancestral roots, close family connections, larger quantities of baggage and business links with China coast ports to travel to China inexpensively.
Most coastal ships hailed from Southeast Asian port-of-origin destinations with large ethnic Chinese populations, such as Singapore, Saigon, Bangkok and Manila; many also called at Hong Kong.
Regular, scheduled passenger-freight services through Hong Kong continued after the 1949 Communist assumption of power in mainland China, but steadily diminished in frequency after the United Nations-led embargo on direct China trade was mandated in 1950, following the outbreak of the Korean war.
One exception was passenger-freight services to Taiwan; these expanded considerably, particularly as commercial flights between Hong Kong and Taipei in those years – relative to distance covered – were some of the most expensive in the region.
In his evocatively written memoir Elegant Flower: Recollections of a Cadet in Cathay (first published in 1956 and reissued in 1987), Malayan Civil Service Cadet Desmond Neill vividly described his voyage up to Amoy (Xiamen) by coastal passenger vessel from Singapore for Hokkien language studies; almost the last British official to do so in pre-liberation China.
The sailing junk once symbolised Hong Kong. Not any more
The sailing junk once symbolised Hong Kong. Not any more
Neill’s rackety departure from Singapore’s Clifford Pier was much the same in 1947 as from any other Asian port city in those years – including Hong Kong: “[…] the agent’s launch lurched away from the pier, ploughing into the sea and causing a ripple of waves to rock the idle sampans”.
“The Chinese boatmen, roused from their napping, cursed good-naturedly, and the chatter and laughter, spitting and coughing, and friendly bustle of Clifford Pier was lost and drowned in the churning of launch gears.”
Coastal vessels were seldom large, even if they did cross hundreds of miles of open sea between ports. Neill’s passenger-cargo vessel was no exception.
“We turned towards a very small black vessel which loomed forlornly in the distance,” he wrote. “The only big thing about her were two huge Chinese characters painted on the side, which proclaimed her felicitous name – The Esteemed Positive Principle.
There she lay, like an elongated black octopus, extending into surrounding barges her tentacle-like slings, and grasping netfuls of baggage and cargo, which were swung high and rhythmically disappeared into the insatiable maw of her holds.”
En route, The Esteemed Positive Principle called at Saigon, Hainan, Hong Kong and Swatow to embark or discharge passengers and freight.
Why the telegraph was life-changing for Hong Kong, used to snail mail
Why the telegraph was life-changing for Hong Kong, used to snail mail
Hong Kong was noticeably different in official attitudes to those encountered in other ports. In particular, diminished opportunities for free hospitality at the shipping company’s expense, and other forms of peculation perpetrated by customs and immigration personnel upon passengers seen to be wealthy, was also in sharp contrast to other places en route.
“Those returning to the southern parts of Kwangtung province disembarked at Hong Kong with an orderliness in sharp contrast to the excitement at Hainan,” Neill noted. “Only a handful of officials boarded the ship [in Hong Kong], and they completed formalities with a minimum of fuss and with entertainment limited to a glass of cool orange crush or iced lager […]”
Some passenger-freight services still operated in the 1990s. One vivid personal memory remains a 1995 sea voyage from Hong Kong to Amoy. By then, deck passage tickets were obsolete; basic bunk-bed accommodation, and saloon lounges with long-distance bus or railway carriage-type seats, were available instead.
Nevertheless, our early-morning arrival through muddy coastal waters at Amoy, with the picturesque island of Kulangsu opposite, unexpectedly echoed Neill’s beguiling descriptions from more than 40 years earlier.