Stubbs Road Mansion

Have I got a story for you.  In fact, I have lots of stories all wrapped up in this one, and yes, they all have happy endings.

First Story: You may have seen a simply gorgeous film called "Inn of the Sixth Happiness" that won an Oscar for Ingrid Bergman back before I was born, and that would undoubtedly be a classic today barring the fact it has Hollywood actors made up to look like Chinese and lots of highly racist dialogue. In fact, it's all too-too-much by today's standards and even though it is still a beautiful film, it now seems so dated that it's sadly very laughable.

OK, so that story doesn't have a happy ending, but it's the only one.

Second Story: I saw this film as a little kid and loved it. But mostly I entirely fell in love with a certain house shown in it. Great chunks of this film can now be found on youtube so let me show you only a bit of it:



That first minute. That's the house I'm talking about. The Mandarin's mansion. Gorgeous, right?

Anyway, when we were in HK back in 1968, we were on a journey up to The Peak when mum pointed ...

 What we saw back then,

 only not with those people in front.

... "Look, that's the Mandarin's mansion from 'Inn of the Sixth Happiness'!" and at first sight I felt the most incredible surge of excitement that anything so beautiful actually existed and felt an irresistible urge to get in there in person to check it out.

And did I? You have to wait for the happy ending to that particular story.

Third Story: this Stubbs Road mansion, known now as 'King Yin Lei', is quite extraordinary because, well, back then, in 1937 when this house was built, the Nazi Party was on the rise and not just in Germany either because all over the world mega-racism was the order of the day and this area of Hong Kong, The Peak, was Mega-Snobsville and only the very top of the British Colonial hierarchy and the very richest of the European taipans were allowed to build (Jackie Chan grew up on The Peak, by the way, but that was only because his mum was a cook at one of these mansions.)

However, in the midst of this era of uber-racism - or maybe because of it? - a Chinese lady called Mrs Shum Li was given permission to buy land up there and build her dream house, and here it is: 

 Certainly my dream house as well.

If you want a better look, here's the official photo of the place:

Not taken by me obviously.

She called the place "Hei Lo" and was aiming for an East-West fusion of architecture which I think she pulled off exceptionally well, and in doing so she also created here a new sort of building style that became very fashionable in HK among the very rich and thus a lot of wonderful old pre-war HK mansions are of this genre.

However in light of when "Hei Lo" was built, in 1937, right in the midst of the pre-war rising-Nazi-power era, I have to say I found this very strange:

 Note the difference between the old and new tiles.

This difference was deliberate. Back to this later.

Can you see them there? The mosaics on the floor? No? Let me show them to you again:

 Swastika? Seriously?

Yes, I am aware that the swastika was originally the symbol of Buddha's Wheel of Life, however I can't see how anyone back in 1937 wasn't highly aware that it had been hi-jacked by the Nazis, inverted and made to mean something entirely different. Having them all over her outdoor patios makes me extraordinarily interested in who exactly Mrs Shum Li was and what her story is.

Anyway, fusing the second and third stories, as I said I've always longed to visit this mansion but for a lot of my time in Hong Kong it was still a privately-owned home - owned by the Yeo family I heard - and it's not like you can just go up and knock on a front door requesting a guided tour, although - yeah, yeah - I have been known to do that sort of thing in the past, but NEVER when I'm not sure if the occupants speak English, so without meeting a Yeo in person, King Yin Lei was definitely off-limits to me.

Fourth Story: King Yin Lei has been much in the news for the past five years because of the terrible saga the poor house went through. And if you want to know all the details of that horribleness, you'll find it here:

But the quick story is that, in 2007, the Yeo family put Mrs Shum Li's dream home up for sale and although Hong Kong Conservation Society was begged to buy it to preserve it, that heinous toothless tiger I'm forever complaining about refused to get involved and thus the mansion was sold off to a Mainland Chinese CCP Cadre who, as it turned out, intended to tear it down to build luxury high-rise.

When the news finally leaked, our lovely SAR got on its feisty and demanded the Government do something, so Hong Kong threatened and Nasty Cadre resisted ... and during that period, with a strong urge to do something, anything, to save that mansion, even throwing myself in front of bulldozers,  I spent a lot of time having afternoon teas up at Cafe 66, the revolving restaurant atop the Hopewell Building, so I could have an eagle-eye on what this nasty fellow was up to, but I missed the bit where it all turned really vicious and only witnessed the terrible aftermath.

And what I missed was the demolition team turning up and the demolishing about to start, and HK, like a posse turning up at the final moment of a John Wayne oater, rode in - finally answering the public clamour - to slap a stop-work order on the demolition in order to give itself time to decide what to do next.

Toothless tiger indeed, right?

It was their phrase in the order that talked about King Yin Lei's "pristine historical architecture" that got the Cadre going and so the moment HK thought they had him and so cleared off the scene, he ordered his still-standing-by demolition team to smash up everything in the place,

Look again at the place!

What sort of monster wants to damage this?

So wrong, right?

Seriously, everything was smashed. All those magnificent green tiles were hurled to the ground, and jack-hammers were taken to all the walls, and those decorative bits were crushed and all the mosaics were smashed with sledge-hammers. Heart-breaking, right?

However, doing this nastiness to the place didn't do the least bit of good because it threw HK into a rage and finally, finally, finally, the Government acted. Threatening Nasty Cadre with terrible repercussion, the posse was back, demanding to see the damage for itself ... and as you can see on that video clip above, they noted that "the structural skeleton of the building had not been damaged" and thus the place was save-able and so the HK Government organised a land swap with the nasty CCP Cadre so he could build his high-rise elsewhere, then on threat of prosecution ordered him to pay for the repairs and thus King Yin Lei was handed over to the HK Conservation Society to organise the entire rebuild.

My shot of the place 

during the restoration.

And this is the fellow who was put in charge of the entire operation:

I don't know his name and I'm sorry about that because he turned out to be mighty and magnificent and the finished product is stunning.  Let me show you:

Here's the games room after the vicious attack:

 Note that Nasty Cadre even smashed 

the parquetry flooring.

And here is the same room again after the restoration:

Happy ending?

Mighty and magnificent indeed, right?

I'm in awe of the amazingly apt decisions that nice fellow took, like NOT allowing the restoration to be invisible; for people to actually be able to see what was original and what was copied.

And he also made the very wise remark that it was almost - although not quite - a good thing that this viciousness had happened because it meant a LOT of research had to be undertaken into how everything was done in the first place; all skills which had been lost and which had to be relearned and thus HK now has a LOT of re-skilled artisans who can do everything that was done here back in 1937.

So this is the happy ending to Story Four! Nice, right? 

But, moving away from the main narrative thrust of Story Four,  if you want to know if I have any criticism of the restoration, I have to say that, yes, I do.  If you look at that film clip from "Inn of the Sixth Happiness" the decor is entirely Chinese but if you look at what is there now, it's all ...

 ... almost the entire decor is like this ...

... kinda French Provincial rococo and I must say that King Yin Lei deserves better because, well, this European decor doesn't really suit it.

In fact, this games table/opium bed in the games room ...

... is probably the only Asian piece in the place and that is just WRONG.

But back from this aside to Story Three: The restoration was finished last year and I sooo wanted to see it however it simply wasn't possible ... until last Sunday when I read in South China Morning Post that there was an open-day up at King Yin Lei, so I bullied poor Keith into coming up to The Peak with me so I could fulfill that urge from 1968 and get into that wonderful mansion in person.

It wasn't easy since Keith was exhausted after an all-Saturday high school English Language tournament and simply wanted to collapse, so it took me all day working on him and it wasn't until late afternoon that he finally surrendered and agreed.

But when we finally arrived at 55 Stubbs Road, it looked like it wasn't going to happen. "Sorry, only ticket holders allowed inside."  we were told at the gate.

"But ... but ... but!" I spluttered, and this wonderful fellow overheard me:

The very kindly Mr So!

"Stay here." says wonderful Mr So. "I'll see if I can get you in."

He went away and it took only five minutes and one cigarette before he was back. "You're in." he tells us.

Thank you, Mr So! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

King Yin Lei was indeed wonderful and let me show you just a few of the great many photos I took that afternoon:

Fifth Story: Now that the restoration is finished, HK Government is asking the big question "What shall we do with the place? It can't just sit there!" so part of the plan behind this open-day was to let people know and see the various suggestions folks and organisations had come up with.

Perhaps revealing what may have been his plan all along - also getting Westerners opinions of what should be done - the very kindly Mr So suggested that we too check those proposals out and let them know which one we liked best, but we can't really offer HK any real opinions because Keith and I are now in a big snit with each other because neither of us agree with each enough to answer that question.

But I will say that I'm sad that every single one of these proposals we saw involves the destruction of that rather charming swimming pool down the slope:

 Does everyone want this to go?

Yeah, me too! 

It's indeed lovely but those silver tiles would be

virtually impossible to keep clean.

These are a couple of samples of what folks want to do with the place:

The Ink Society put forward this plan:

 The swimming pool becomes 

a gallery for ink drawings.

Call me a conspiracy theorist but I see the hand of the magnificent Anson Chan behind this proposal. 

 The magnificent Anson Chan, 

Anson Chan is currently looking for a venue to show her mother's ink drawings and since she's a THINK BIG sort of thinker I really do believe this is her idea.

Yes, I really do think her mother's drawings should be on display somewhere, and I'm not just saying that becauses I've admired Anson so much - ever since I met her at a Democracy March wearing a Juicy Couture tracksuit with pearls which was obviously her idea of how to "dress down like the people" - AND I have long loved her mother, Fang, the daughter of a Shanghai industrialist who is the very same wild Bohemian Chinese artist you're forever reading about in all those novels and autobiographies by folks who lived in Paris during the Ernest Hemingway/Gertrude Stein Epoch.

Fang was an incredible lady, and one who went on to marry, have seven kids, become a widow very young, raise all those kids single-handedly and in relative poverty, but who all grew up to be fabulous, and yet she still remained committed to Art and being an artist, so who wouldn't want to see those ink paintings she spent her life doing.

Naturally when I told Keith that any proposal put forward by Anson Chan had my automatic approval, and I too really wanted Fang's art works given a gallery they deserved, we had a big argument because he said I was being elitist and really I should be supporting the other proposal where this mansion becomes a wedding venue for regular Hong Kongers.

This is the other proposal and as you can see it's yet another assault on that swimming pool:

The wedding chapel venue!

Can you see it down there,

right where the pool is now?

That's where your wedding would take place,
and after you're married

your banquet is held in King Yin Lei.
Nice!

To be honest, I'm not in the least opposed to this plan as it is indeed the more democratic one, although I do have a single major objection: this proposal doesn't address what I foresee as terrible problems with parking. In a nutshell: Chinese weddings are always so very large and Stubbs Road is so narrow, winding and dangerous, and since there's no place to park within the grounds of the mansion and having guests park kerb-side would only cause accidents, the solution is going to be either the HK Government will have to buy more of this very expensive land to build a guest carpark or else it will have to organise shuttle services from a car park built down the hill maybe in the somewhat cheaper areas of Happy Valley, Causeway Bay or other non-The Peak environs, and either way both these options will end up being very very costly.

There was also another proposal but Keith and I were arguing so hard over the first two, neither of us noticed what the third one was.  Nonetheless, I do have a photo:

And now that I finally look at that one closely ... are those a row of terracotta warriors down there where the swimming pool is now? That is entirely bizarre!  What on earth is that about? Gosh, I'm really regretting that this proposal didn't get my attention because it's kinda mind-boggling.

So "What shall we do with the place?" remains mid-narrative and you'll have to wait to find out if Story Five has a happy ending.

And to wind up this piece by showing you the happy ending of Story Three, let's just have a shot of me finally releasing a childhood dream I had way way back in 1968:

 Yup, there's my happy ending.
In a nutshell!