Kadoorie Estate, where the who's who of Hong Kong's corporate, entrepreneurial and entertainment industries have lived since 1937, has been doing its bit for the community. Chitralekha Basu reports.

Nicholas Colfer has been researching the history of Hong Kong Engineering and Construction Company (founded 1922). He draws our attention to an interesting feature in the rent books of Kadoorie Estate, owned by the same family of Baghdadi Jews who also owned the Hong Kong Engineering and Construction Company, among several other businesses including electric power plants, hotels, helicopter services and rope manufacturing.

No entries appear between December 1941 and September 1945. Those familiar with Hong Kong's history during the World War II probably would know that Kadoorie Estate - one of the city's first European-style, high-end residential enclaves for highly-placed corporate executives and company heads - was taken over by the Japanese. Asking the Japanese occupiers to pay a rent, naturally, was out of the question. Many among the estate's residents - including journalist-turned-entrepreneur JP Braga, who at the time chaired the Kadoorie family-owned China Light and Power and being the urban councilor of Kowloon was one of the facilitators of the development - went away to live in relatively stable Macao.

Interestingly, when the rent ledger was reopened in 1945, entries continued to be recorded by the same hand. Colfer imagines the estate staff member in charge of collecting rents probably carried the rent book with him to Macao. "It's quite moving to see the same handwriting resurface after four years," he says.

In these times, fraught with cynicism, shifting loyalties, altered circumstances and fast-mutating urban landscapes, it is reassuring to know certain things do not change. The Hong Kong Engineering and Construction Company purchased two huge mounds of barren granite at the junction of Waterloo Road and Argyle Street, in 1931, with a view to sculpting a sophisticated garden city from the rocks. It was considered a somewhat fantastic idea then but has proved sustainable.

Kadoorie Estate - an exclusive residential community made up of 86 houses and St. George's Court, a low-rise apartment block, located along Kadoorie Avenue and its spur, Braga Circuit, in Kowloon - has not changed all that much since the first unit was rented out in 1937. The area surrounding the estate's 8 hectares has seen tremendous vertical growth - typical of Hong Kong since the 1960s - cutting off the view of the sea from the hills. The rest - the landscape, architecture and the values informing the estate, since construction began in 1934, have remained pretty much the same over the years.

"The founding fathers - Elly Kadoorie and JP Braga - were attracted by the hill with a road round it. The place had a semi-countryside feel," says Colfer, who is also the chair of Kadoorie Estates Ltd and now lives in the iconic round house at No 20 that Elly Kadoorie's son Lawrence had designed in 1957 to serve as a family residence but ultimately didn't use himself. "So they thought they would create a green lung in the middle of a bustling city. They were visionaries, who thought of getting people out of the congested city and giving them an alternative lifestyle. At the same time, whether it's goldfish you are looking for, or a computer battery, a few minutes' walk down the hill will get you in the heart of the real Hong Kong."

Beverly Hills of HK

In the popular imagination, Kadoorie Estate is associated with the lifestyles of the rich and famous - the sort of place where Nancy Kwan, the star in The World of Suzie Wong, grew up. Fans of singer-actor Leslie Cheung still visit the estate, taking photos of the house where he lived, even though it is more than 10 years since his untimely death.

The tenants' log, maintained since 1937, reads like a Who's Who of Hong Kong's corporate, entrepreneurial and entertainment-related histories. "In the 1940s and 50s about 50 percent of the tenants were corporate executives. They were the VIPs of trading and shipping companies and engineers: Liddell Bros; Pure Cane Molasses Co; GEC; Watson & Co; American President Lines; HK & Whampoa Dock Co; Gilman & Co; Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick, China Light & Power," informs Colfer. The oldest tenant, Hong Kong Olympic Academy Chairman, A. de O. Sales, moved in during November 1953.

"As Hong Kong's economy grew, more people in aviation and shipping, some in banking and other professionals arrived in the 1960s through the 1980s. New corporations represented on the tenant list included Standard Chartered Bank; HSBC; Bank of America; HAECO; HK Kowloon Wharf Co; HK United Dockyards; Jardines; Swire; Hutchison; Cathay Pacific; Deacons; Lowe Bingham & Matthews," adds Colfer.

By the 1990s, Kadoorie Estate had won the endorsement of people in showbiz. These were the years, notes Colfer, that saw "a transition to fewer corporates and more individuals - mostly wealthy Hong Kong industrialist families and prominent media personalities, including Edison Chen and his father Edward, Jacky Chan, Jimmy Lai, opera singer and actress Fong Yim-fun".

Although only the very-affluent can afford to rent here, Kadoorie Estate was never a gated community. Dog-walkers and joggers use its many lanes, open to public access. Clichd though the term may appear, Kadoorie Estate, often called as an oasis in the middle of a concrete jungle, serves as a becalming alternative to the bustle and din of city life not just to its tenants, but to outsiders as well.

It's one of the greenest urban pockets in Hong Kong. "There are more than 2,000 trees in this estate," informs general manager Raymond Ho. "Every year, we have tree doctors clinically examine them, looking for dead or dying trees," he says, noting that diseased trees are uprooted and mature trees planted in their place. "Because of the abundance of trees, the area enjoys a micro-climate humidity. The air pollution index is 2 degrees lower than in Tsim Sha Tsui."

Conservation and recycling

Environment friendliness is the watchword at Kadoorie Estate. Apart from the extensive and continuous greening of the premises, the estate management encourages waste separation. Colfer has a food decomposer in his kitchen that turns waste into fertilizer.

All along, the estate owners have made it a point to retain the buildings' distinctive external features - white walls, sprawling huge balconies, surrounded by iron pipe railings, rounded off corners, inspired by the smooth, streamlined bodies of airplanes, cars and marine vehicles - even as they keep refurbishing the interiors using high-quality, latest fittings in the kitchens and bathrooms. When they re-do the floors, the original teakwood flooring and tiles from the 1950s are recycled, and arranged in a different pattern.

"They haven't really torn anything down," says Christobelle Liao, group director of Corporate and Legal for The Peninsula Hotels. She has lived on the estate since the 1980s. "The last large-scale redevelopment was 15 years ago, but they were keen to keep the structures low-rise and low-density. They do up the interiors without changing the faade, using far more modern finishes every time," Liao adds.

The picturesque and pristine feel of the estate owes to those low-rise and low-density features. Resisting the temptation to build on every patch of available land and pull down each low-rise building to erect a rectilinear beehive in its place is extraordinary, given the paucity of housing land and astronomical property prices in Hong Kong.

Lee Ho-yin, head of the Architectural Conservation Programmes division at University of Hong Kong, agrees that the low-rise and low-concentration model does seem antithetical to the building patterns generic to Hong Kong, where the architectural landscape is constantly morphing and shooting upwards.

Lee credits the estate's owners for keeping it that way for nearly 80 years. The estate, he says, is a manifestation of "the Kadoorie family's vision to maintain the integrity of a legacy, which is indeed at odds with the general lack of vision and short-term profit maximization that seem to drive HK's developers".

The estate's founding fathers were also pioneers in bringing Bauhaus-style architecture - a functional, non-embellished design with flat roofs, non-ornamental faades and glass curtain walls - to China, not too long after the style emerged in Germany in 1919, Lee points out.

Socialist model, capitalist use

Interestingly, Bauhaus architecture was originally intended for the common people. One of the first such projects, the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart, was conceptualized as experimental housing for blue-collar workers. "It was meant to be the cheapest possible housing where people with limited income could live in comfort and with dignity," says Lee. "The political foundation of such an idea had to do with socialism."

"In Kadoorie Estate a similar model has been adapted to serve the capitalist elite," he adds. "The elitist element was introduced by keeping the estate low-density with lots of greenery surrounding each unit."

Prospective tenants are attracted to the Kadoorie brand, wishing to buy into a certain lifestyle. Those who can afford the rents usually come to stay here long-term. More than 40 to 50 percent tenants have stayed on for more than 10 years.

"The kind of space we have here would be difficult to find anywhere else in Hong Kong. It's like being inside a forest right in the middle of the hustle bustle of the city and yet secluded from it. We enjoy a lifestyle that's more in tune with nature," says Liao.

"The building materials from the 1950s are of great quality. The houses have been very well preserved. They are of a size one wouldn't even get on The Peak," she adds, drawing up a catalogue of reasons why moving out was never an option for her family.

Does the idea of a few privileged people living in at least 3,000-square-feet units with sprawling gardens and breathing a more rarified air than the rest seem a bit unfair, given that paucity of housing is perhaps Hong Kong's most pressing problem?

Lee says the answer to that lies in asking who the beneficiaries of keeping Kadoorie Estate the way it is really are.

"I like the fact that there are well-maintained roads and public spaces around the properties that people can access," he says. "It serves as a lung of the community, which is so much better than if the owners had filled up the open spaces with more constructions - luxurious housing that very few people can afford. Developing this space will benefit only a few whereas by keeping it the way it is the community benefits as a whole."

Contact the writer at basu@chinadailyhk.com

Images of Kadoorie Estate from the 1930s demonstrate how the structures have remained much the same in nearly eight decades.Provided To China Daily

Nick Colfer, chair of Kadoorie Estates, says the founding fathers of the estate wanted to create a lung in the middle of a bustling city. Edmond Tang / China Daily

St. George's Court comes with 39 colonial-style apartments, typically 3,000 square feet in size.

Many of the houses have teakwood floors from the 1950s.

Colfer's living room at No 20. The circular design of the house is inspired by the streamlined structure of a marine vessel.

Granite stone walls are a generic feature of Kadoorie Estate.

A miniature model of the European-style, high-end residential enclave at the Kadoorie Estate office. Edmond Tang / China Daily

(HK Edition 09/22/2015 page9)