The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Colonialism, Power, and the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank
nonetheless powerful and persuasive. These included both maintaining the
distance between the two cultural groups through social and spatial segregation
and reinforcing the hegemony of English over Chinese through the
language used in education. The fundamental notion underlying and justifying
these measures was “Orientalism”—embedded within which is a focus
on the basic distinction between the “Orient” and the “Occident,” as
well as the belief that certain territories and people long for domination. 24
Social Segregation
A real sense of separateness was cultivated in nineteenth-century Hong
Kong through the government policy of nonintervention and nonconsultation
toward the Chinese. They were, for example, encouraged to establish
their own policing system and the government made no effort to seek their
opinions on public affairs. 25 Segregation by race appeared to be the norm of
the day: the use of the city hall library and museum was restricted to Europeans
on Sundays and at certain hours during the week; the Yacht Club, like
other specialized clubs, did not allow Chinese crewman to take part in its
championship races; and the Hong Kong Club rigidly excluded Chinese,
Indians, and women. 26
This phenomenon was manifested in the 1886 headquarters in the
verandah, which ran around the whole building. As an architectural device,
the verandah combined climatic adaptation with the purpose of upholding
social distance. Underlying its use was an idea of the “tropics,” perceived by
Victorian Englishmen as a zone not just climatic but also cultural, with potentially
threatening lands and people that were nevertheless susceptible to
control. Originated from the “bungalow” in colonial India, the encircling
verandah shaded the main structure and provided a space for carefully regulated
intercourse with the hostile world. 27
Two huge internal buffer zones also expressed social segregation.
The first was a massive space underneath the dome in the banking hall,
which separated the general offices of the European staff to the east and the
Chinese staff to the west. These offices all had broad counters in front of
them, bending inward and following the octagonal shape of the dome. 28 The
open space was about 50 feet across at its widest point, and its sheer size not
only helped maintain the social distance between the staff but also helped
eliminate any possible mingling between the European and the Chinese
customers. The second buffer zone was a 20-foot-wide corridor separating
the European half and the Chinese half of the adjoining offices, which was
in turn expressed in the praya elevation as a projected central bay. 29
The desire to maintain social distance was reflected as well in the
use of a thick, concrete ceiling to separate the Chinese employees’ living
quarters in the basement from the European staff’s living quarters on the