Tales from No.9 Ice House Street

4. More Selections from Album of Memories

In the 1930s and the early 1940s, I had aspired at different times to do a variety of things in later life. It was hardly surprising that none of those aspirations materialized. At Wah Yan College I idolized my Irish Jesuit mentors and longed to be one of them. I loved drama and the cinema, and sometimes wondered whether I would make a good stage actor or film star. Soccer was my favourite sport, and I could not help hoping to become a champion footballer like Lee Wai-tong ( ଈ˔ңయਦ ) who, before the war, was an outstanding centre forward playing for South China Athletic Association ( ۖ๛ ), and is, to this day, still believed by many to be the best soccer player Hong Kong has ever produced. None of these fancies lasted very long. At the University of Hong Kong, I was bound by the conditions of my scholarship to teach for three years after my graduation. For three consecutive years as the undergraduate chairman of the Education Society, I ran a free night school sponsored by the society for impecunious children in the western part of town. I conducted hourly classes for them several times each week, enjoyed every moment of it, and thought I would not mind being a respected headmaster one day. The Japanese occupation of Hong Kong put an end to those thoughts. During the war, I worked as a junior officer of the Nationalist Army in Guangdong. My immediate superior officer Lieutenant General Lee Yen-wor ( ң‫۽‬՗ ) who, unlike the overwhelming majority of the other senior officers, was so dedicated to his job and his country and altogether incorruptible that his teaching and sterling example made me plan to return to the mainland after my education abroad. However, like all my other early aspirations, this was not to be. More Selections from Album of Memories 4 4 42 TALES FROM NO. 9 ICE HOUSE STREET In those days, studying and practising law never even entered into my calculations because the British colonial government had for a century and a quarter kept the people of Hong Kong ignorant of the law so that for a long time the Bar was altogether alien and unknown to me. Again, nothing was further from my mind than to become a police officer, because I had heard so many ugly stories of the arrogance, brutality and corruption of the lawmen. Yet, ironically, I ended up not only qualifying and making my living as a barrister, but also enlisting and serving as an active auxiliary member of the Hong Kong Police during the initial years of my legal practice. After the capitulation of Japan in August 1945 and the reoccupation of Hong Kong shortly thereafter by the British Navy, one of the many immediate problems confronting the provisional postwar colonial government set up to restore law and order and to administer to the needs of the territory was the acute shortage of manpower, some threequarters of the local population having departed for the Chinese mainland during the Japanese occupation. To tide over this shortage, a number of emergency regulations were introduced requiring certain classes of local citizens other than civil servants to join one or other of a list of auxiliary government services. Although this manpower problem soon began to ease as people flooded back from China, those regulations remained in force for some time before they were eventually repealed. At the beginning of January 1953, after quitting as Crown Counsel, I elected as a public duty required under the emergency regulations to enlist as a member of the listed Police Reserve, even though by that time those regulations were hardly enforced anymore, if at all. I chose the Police Reserve because of my knowledge of the law and because several of my friends had already done likewise. The Police Reserve was a long-standing institution founded by the Legislative Councillor, the Honourable Mr S. W. Tso ( ઴ഁʐ ), before the Pacific War. It remained dormant throughout the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong but was reactivated after the war. In the 1950s, it was headed by Mr T. O. Tso ( ઴‫ژ‬Ϊ ), an offspring of its founder, who, like his father, was given the rank of Assistant Commissioner. After undergoing a short period of training at the police school, I passed out as a reserve police constable, and because I was then residing at King’s Road in North Point was immediately posted to Shau Kei Wan Police Station. One of my duties as such required me to patrol...