The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Part I: Filters
170
9
171
Shirley Wong
Moreover, there was a segregation of circulation and entrances. The
back staircase on the west side of the building linking the basement and the
upper floors kept local servants off the grand staircase. There were side entrances
to the basement from the Queen’s Road and from the praya, 35 similarly
indicating that Chinese coolies and servants were not allowed to share
the main entrance door with the European taipans.
Thus spatial segregation within the headquarters building was a
microcosm of the system operating in the city as a whole. Its location underscored
the sense of separation between the Bank as a key member of the
dominant group and the natives. The headquarters was positioned not at the
heart of the European commercial sector but at its fringe, further away from
the native quarter than any other plot in the sector.
Segregation of the Chinese Elite
The relationship between the two cultural groups was not just one of complete
isolation. A Chinese elite class gradually emerged in the 1850s and
began to find their way into the intermediate zone. It included wealthy Chinese
merchants who capitalized on the sharp rise in the demand for Chinese
products overseas caused by the mass emigration following the Taiping Rebellion.
36 An English-educated Chinese elite acted as middleman between
the governing and the governed—a group to which the compradores belonged.
The compradore system enabled the dominant group to exercise
power over the dependent group while maintaining social distance; in the
positioning of the compradore’s office in the headquarters, we see a spatial
representation of how the mechanism worked.
The compradore was responsible for recruiting and guaranteeing
all Chinese employees, which explains why his office was next to the back
staircase linking the servants in the basement and the European staff upstairs.
But he also functioned as a business assistant whose responsibilities
included overseeing all business transactions relating to Chinese merchants,
handling all cash, validating the bullion, and managing the exchange business
among gold, silver, copper coins, and different treaty port silver dollars.
37 Because of the large sums of funds he handled, the second compradore of
the Bank (1877–1892) was required to provide a security of HK$300,000, 38
a sum equal to the total cost of the 1886 headquarters building. The compradore
was directly answerable to the chief manager, 39 which in theory put
him on equal status with the semi-senior European staff of the Bank. That
the head compradore’s room was in the office area behind the banking hall
is consonant with this rank. Yet his office was segregated from all European
staff—it was located on the west side of the corridor, next to the lavatories
for European clerks and behind the stationery room; 40 thus he might not