Road, The

Foreword by Peggy Cater

A mong the small eclectic group of Colonial Cadet officers, considered by themselves and others as the elite, which led the post-war Government of Hong Kong, Austin Coates stood out as a most unusual, multi-talented addition to their ranks. Coming from a famous family and having served as an Intelligence Officer in the RAF, he found himself in the early 1950s posted to work to KMA Barnett, acknowledged leader in the halls of academe, in particular Sinology, in possibly the least sophisticated area of Hong Kong’s population as a District Officer, New Territories (Islands). This job was a pure gift to Austin, giving him a small kingdom of his own away from more pedestrian colleagues some of whom were not entirely comfortable with his sexual orientation. He in turn considered their stronghold, the Secretariat, to be a sort of nursing home where none of the patients ever recovered and when in town contrived to spend time elsewhere especially at Government House where Lady Grantham sought his advice on interior decoration, recognising that here was a man of taste and discrimination. He began to write when most of the despised denizens of the Secretariat limited their talents to memos in the files. The Road, written when Lantau, now the site of Chek Lap Kok International Airport, was still an unspoilt island, larger than Hong Kong Island itself, where the greeting was ‘Which hill have you come from?’, where the only transport was an occasional sedan chair for those who couldn’t make the steep gradients on foot to Shangri-la (Ngong Ping), and there was one horse who had his own sampan (literally three planks tied together) upon which to ford the stream in the village. Such wonderful memories, nostalgia and, yes, regret. It is wonderful that The Road is being reprinted. Foreword Peggy Cater v ...