(Image: www.travelsfinder.com)
No organisation has left a larger footprint on Hong Kong‘s long colonial experience under the British (1841-1997) than the hongs (see Endnote). And one British hong that has been especially significant in shaping the course of British (and beyond) Hong Kong has been Jardine, Matheson. The company under the direction of Scots William Jardine and James Matheson arrived in Hong Kong on the ground floor, securing lot No. 1 on Hong Kong Island in the initial land sale by the British colonial administrators in 1841 [‘Jardine, Matheson – company history’, www.jardines.com].
⍗ Jardine’s original business premises on Causeway Bay
Jardine, Matheson Co Hong Kong replaced the firm’s previous base in Canton (Guangzhou). From Hong Kong (which soon become Jardine, Matheson’s headquarters) and from the startup of it’s Shànghâi operation a couple of years later, the company laid the foundations of it’s fortune initially from a highly profitable trade of smuggling opium (as well as tea, silk and cotton) into mainland China from South Asia. Jardine, Matheson quickly diversified into more ethical and legal enterprises, adding steamships to their portfolio from the 1850s (China Coast Steam Navigation Co, Indo-China Steam Navigation Co, Yangtśe Steam Navigation Co) which serviced the trade routes to Japan, Singapore, Calcutta, Manila and Vladivostok [‘Jardine, Matheson & Co. Steam Nav. Co / Indo-China Steam Nav. Co / Yangtse S.N. Co.’, www.theshipslist.com].
Taipan Wm Jardine ⍗
Jardine Matheson, a ubiquitous hong
Over the years Jardine, Matheson (JM Co) continued to diversify—cotton mills, property, breweries, insurance, financiers (of the first railway in China), sugar plantations, etc. All the while extending it’s trade links – Europe, Africa, Australia, America. Later JM Co got into hotels, motor vehicles, food and hygiene product wholesaling and so on. They functioned as Far East agents – for gunmakers amongst other manufacturers. JM Co even acted in a para-government capacity for consuls for foreign powers doing business in the region, as did other hongs [Jan Morris, Hong Kong: Epilogue to an Empire, (2000)].
Hong Kong Island ⍗
Butterfield and Swire
This particular British hong was something of a latecomer to Hong Kong compared to the pioneering Jardine, Matheson Co. The B&S trading house arrived on the Island in 1869. But Butterfield and Swire did not waste any time in developing into one of the most powerful players in the territory. The driving force behind the company was John Samuel Swire✱. Previously, Butterfield, Swire and his brother William, had started a shipping and trading business in Shanghai. The Swire hong’s road to riches was predicated, not on the illicit drug trade like JM Co, but on a combination of shipbuilding, sugar-refining, banking, insurance, mining, railroad building and other later entrepreneurial pursuits in the Far East, such as bottling Coca-Cola for Asia’s markets. Swire’s diverse subsidiaries have included the Taikoo Sugar Refinery, Taikoo Dockyard – which built mainly steamboats for the China Navigation Co, another Swire subsidiary. Since the 20th century another star in the business stable of the Swire Group☒ is the leading Asian airline Cathay Pacific. Early on Swire’s was also an agent for the Blue Funnel cruise ship line [Morris; ‘Butterfield and Swire’, (School of Oriental and African Studies, London University), The National Archives, http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk].
Taipan JS Swire, “the Senior” ⍐
(Photo: www.industrialhistoryhk.org)
JS Swire’s leadership and business style was unequivocally ruthless and uncompromising, he was very much of the “take-no-prisoners”, old school of business. Under “The Senior” Swire, the company played a telling part in driving some of the other Hong Kong frontier merchants into eventual business oblivion – as happened with two pioneering hongs, Dent and Co and Russell and Co (Morris).
Jardine, Matheson v Swire/Ewo v Taikoo☒
Swire‘s great and enduring rival in Hong Kong (and in the East) has been JM Co. For both hongs in the formative years the main game was about buying and selling in China for the European market. As both firms added more business pursuits to their respective China Sea empires, they came more into competition with each other. Swire’s Quarry Bay Taikoo Dockyard and sugar refinery for instance was in stiff competition with Jardine’s Kowloon Whampoa dockyard and refinery [‘Taikoo Sugar Refinery’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
⍗ SS Shuntien, built at Taikoo Docks 
Dynastic hongs with staying power
The Jardine presence in Honk Kong and at the helm of the company continues to this day through the Keswick family, ancestors of founder William Jardine’s sister. In a similar vein, the Swire name retains a connection with the present Swire Group (current conglomerate chairman Barnaby Swire is a descendent of John Samuel Swire and there are other ‘Swires’ in the management hierarchy).
(Photo: www.hkland.com/)
1984 and beyond
After several years of tortuous negotiations between the UK Thatcher government and China agreement was finally reached to hand over Hong Kong to Beijing in 1997. This left Swires and Jardines, two of the British hongs with most at stake, with the thorny issue of whether to stay in the erstwhile British colony or not under the hard-to-predict communists. Swires, who had earlier pulled its businesses out of China four year after the communist takeover (to later return), chose to keep its operational base in Hong Kong. Swires sought to work with the Chinese regime, entering into airline deals to give the PRC an interest in Cathay Pacific and secure a domestic foothold for itself. The Jardines conglomerate opted for a different strategy, choosing in 1984 to cut and run, switching its legal domicile from Hong Kong to Bermuda and delisting on the HK Stock Exchange in favour of London and Singapore. This move earned Jardines the ire of Beijing⇟. Even after the ink was dry on the hand-over decision, JM Co continue to lobby the British government hard (with Simon Keswick particularly vocal) to keep the territory out of Beijing’s clutches [Felix Patrikeeff, Mouldering Pearl: Hong Kong at the Crossroads, (1989)].
By the turn of the 21st century JM Co had regained ground from a successful drive into Southeast Asia markets and had once again firmly secured a beachhead on mainland China [‘A tale of two hongs’, The Economist, 30-Jun-2007, www.theeconomist.com ; ‘Jardine Matheson Returns to China’, The Economist, 02-Jul-2015, www.theeconomist.com].
Postscript: Tension between government and the merchant class
Officially, Hong Kong was run during the British era by a succession of governors, appointed from Whitehall. However a fundamental difference in raison d’être existed between the governors and the taipans. The governors were about the Imperial interest of Britain, in practical terms they sought to raise sufficient revenue to fund the colony’s administration. The sole concern of the plutocrats, the merchants, was self-enrichment and their natural inclination was to resist all efforts of the governor to raise taxes…this made for a generally very rocky relationship between the Crown Colony’s two power blocks with antithetical interests (Morris).
Endnote: Hongs and taipans
The term ‘hong’ (major foreign trading houses based in Hong Kong to trade with China) derives apparently from the Chinese word cohong, used to describe the guilds of Chinese merchants operating Canton’s trade with the West prior to 1842 (the “Thirteen Factories” or Canton System). In British Hong Kong each hong was headed up by a taipan (or series of taipans) who was the top boss man in the trading company. The hongs employed native (Chinese) personnel, called compradors, who acted as local “go-betweens” to facilitate business for the firms.
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✱ “the Butterfield” in the partnership didn’t last long in Hong Kong with the autocratic Swire edging him into retirement within a short time
☒ both trading houses adopted Chinese business names: Ewo (JM Co) means ” State of happy harmony”; Taikoo (Swire) means “Great and ancient”
⇟ China already held a long-lingering grudge against JM Co … company principal William Jardine was one of the main advocates for Britain to take action against the Chinese Empire in retaliation for it closing down the lucrative opium trafficking trade (leading to the First Opium War)
After several timber bridges came and went, they eventually put up a more substantial (supposedly ‘permanent’) stone bridge in its place (near the corner of Bridge and Pitt Streets), which also had to be replaced owing to it being considerably less substantial than first thought and not permanent at all◵. Bridge Street at that time was called Governors Row as it housed the colony’s first seat of government and the governor’s residence (on the corner of Phillip Street). A commemorative stone on the site (now housing the Museum of Sydney) marks the historic location.
Treasury and Audit Office building (1849-51)
Chief Secretary‘s Office⍟ (1869)
Department of Education (1914) and Lands Department (1877-90) buildings
Commercial buildings dominate the lower end of Bridge St. The Royal Exchange Building (1967) at № 21 Bridge St stands on the original site of the Royal Exchange building (1857) – the first home of the Sydney Stock Exchange. Numerically next to the REB (at № 17-19) is the Singapore Airlines House (1925), an elegant example of the Commercial Palazzo style of architecture.
Perhaps the standout architectural piece of the lower commercial sector is the old Burns Philip and Co head office building (1898-1901) close to George Street, with its elaborate sandstone and brick Neo-Romanesque facade. Architect: Arthur Anderson. Burns Philip were big players in the Australian shipping and trading business. Originally, a convict lumber yard sat on this site.
The pick of the rest of the commercial buildings for compact elegance are probably the brace of adjoining buildings, № 4 Cliveden and № 6, (across the road from BP&Co). The street’s first commercial high-rise building, constructed 1913 in the Federation Free Classical style. Next door to the left of Cliveden is Anchor House (1960), for many years the HQs of the NSW Liberal Party. The site in the early Colonial period contained a female orphan’s asylum which later relocated to a site in Parramatta (now part of a Western Sydney University campus).
Macquarie Place as it was in the early colonial period, unrecognisable today (Source: 
Having traversed the slopes of Zhângbáishān nán (Changbaishan South) and Zhângbáishān xī (Changbaishan West), it is only fitting and proper, in the best traditions of Ed (Hilary), that you should explore the other available slope at Changbai, the North Slope❅.
Zhângbáishān bêi is the most popular section of the Changbai Mountain range. Everywhere across the West slope there were buses unloading visitors, many, many visitors and (therefore) queues! Understandably, the punters were predominantly Chinese from the vast pool of internal tourists who travel from all over the country, but also discernible were pockets of South Korean tourists, including women wearing the hanbok (traditional Korean formal dress).
Before you join the hordes of people ascending the wooden staircase to get a better view of the mountain waterfalls, you might want to linger around the shop stalls long enough to sample the local “hot spring eggs” which are boiled ‘naturally’ in situ in the surrounding hot springs. After trying the eggs (also available in a range of colours), another activity that takes on the element of ritual for the secular visitors is the quasi-ceremonial washing of hands in the nearby “hand washing pool” (supposedly according to the sign posted, a very warm 42°C).
As you proceed along the wooden walkway you will see, strewn all over the ground, pock-marked water holes comprising the mountain’s naturally-heated springs. Most climbers will make for a spot on the boardwalk that will offer the best vantage for the many waterfalls cascading down from the rim of the mountains.
The waterfalls, whose origin point is the majestic strato-volcanic Changbai wonder of Tianchi lake (known in local circles as “the source of three rivers”), function as an ideal backdrop for the myriad of visitors intent on getting their full complement of selfies.
The steps to the right take you up to a quaint bridge and viewing platforms, under which the Weihe River flows down from the main waterfall which comprises a 68-metre drop from the top. Around this spot you can be guaranteed of getting the best vistas of the range and waterfalls.
Another thing you can do here, also with an element of the ritual to it, is drink from the “sacred well”, the Yu Jiang spring. But of course, partaking of the healing waters of Changbaishan is of itself not sufficient, the authentic tourist experience necessitates visual documentation of the ritual.
While you are ‘playing’ the North Slope (as one Chinese English-language promotional blurb interestingly described it), this might also involve a trek through the wilderness down a long set of steps to explore another stretch of Changbai waters. The notice near the start of the wooden track alerting you to the fact that the proximate wilderness is the habitat of the Siberian tiger might be a salutary warning to anyone who might be foolishly tempted to wander too far off the track.
The early British colonists in Sydney were quick to appreciate the value that Observatory Hill held in the formative days of the New South Wales colony. This hill, no more than moderately sized, situated between The Rocks and Barangaroo in the old part of the town, is a rich part of Sydney’s history. Not long after the founding of Port Jackson in 1788, Sydneysiders started putting the well-positioned bluff and its natural endowment to greater or lesser productive use in a variety of ways.
Sydney Observatory, 1874 
Part of Fort Philip was given over in 1825 for the housing of a signal station…it’s construction by colonial architect Mortimer Lewis was prompted by the growth in shipping at the time. From here, flags and semaphore was used to communicate with ships in the harbour below. The presence of signal flags gave rise to a new name for the Hill, Flagstaff Hill (this name remained in currency into the 20th century with some locals referring to as “The Flaggie”). In 1847, with maritime activity in Sydney Town on the rise, a two-storey Telegraph House was added to Flagstaff Hill
Fort Street High – on a 1920 cigarette card! 
The next and most important use made of Flagstaff Hill was the enterprise which gives the hill the name is by known by today, the construction of (Sydney) Observatory. Astronomical observations in the Southern Hemisphere were considered of particular importance and the handily-situated bluff was thought an ideal location to observe the stars. Built from 1857-1859 by architects William Weaver and Alexander Dawson, it originally comprised the observatory and the astronomer’s residence.
There was also a time ball on the observatory tower serving two functions. Each day at precisely one o’clock in the afternoon the time ball would drop, sending a signal (accompanying by a cannon blast) to alert people in the city and more importantly shipping on the seas to the time.
Formal gardens were created around the Observatory, circa 1875, The next decade, under the Flagstaff planting scheme, a grove of palm trees were planted. In the 20th century a tennis court was added. Observatory Park, which surrounds the Observatory itself, with its sloping lawns and great, sprawling old Moreton Bay figs is a popular lunch spot for city workers. The park also houses a Boer War memorial with an antique mounted gun and a bandstand rotunda which is a favourite for wedding photo shoots.
Observatory Park, 1941 
Increasing city light and air pollution since the Seventies saw the Sydney Observatory close in 1982…the complex has since functioned as a scientific museum. Visitors today can take a tour of the Observatory, observe the stars at night through one of the facility’s powerful, modern telescopes, or look at the historic equipment, such as the 29cm refractor telescope, dating from 1874.