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All
About Our Club...
Organised in 1930, Chartered in 1931
On
20th March 1930, Honorary General Commissioner Rtn James
W. Davidson wrote to Rotary International concerning the
promotion of a Rotary Club in Hong Kong. He was introduced
to the Governor, Sir William Peel, by Robert, later Sir
supporters of, the Rotary Movement. Sir William was immediately
sympathetic and helpful. He was aware of the need for
more communication and understanding between the various
ethnic and social groupings in the community. With this
backing, and with the help of such leading citizens as
Robert Kotewell, William Hornell, Vice Chancellor of the
University of Hong Kong, Dr. Aurther Woo and W.E.L. Shanton,
Senior Partner of the Firm Deacons, Solicitors, Rtn Davidson
was able to send a cable to Rotary International on 23rd
November 1930, with the news that the Rotary Club of Hong
Kong would be organized on 8th December 1930.
Rtn Davidson had almost literally rounded up a total of
79 of the leading citizens of Hong Kong as Founder Members.
There were 31 Chinese, one Indian, one Japanese and 46
Americans and Europeans.
The new club met regularly from 8th December 1930 on Tuesdays
at Lane Crawford's Restaurant, such meetings were of course
provisional until Charter No. 3413 was granted by Rotary
International on 20th February 1931.
Meanwhile Rtn James W. Davidson and his family had left
Hong Kong to return to Chicago. After revisiting Shanghai
and Japan he left Yokohama on 12th March to Vancouver.
Having filed his report in Chicago he returned to his
home in Canada. His health had been declining for some
time, partly at least as a result of the hardship and
tropical sickness on his journey through southern Asia,
and he died shortly after returning home.
Rotary in Hong Kong owes it to Rtn Davidson to record
the following quotation from an address by Rtn Julean
Arnold of Shanghai when he visited the Rotary Club of
Hong Kong on 17th November 1931:
"Hong Kong was supposed to be the hardest place
in the world in which to start a Rotary Club. Jim (Davidson)
was a great organizer, and I was not surprised at his
trying to crack this hard nut. His great joy when he came
back to Shanghai after a tour devoted to starting Rotary
clubs was his accomplishment in organizing the Hong Kong
Rotary Club in which he took great pride."
In 1935 Rotary International decided to form a District
No. 81 to unite member clubs in Hong Kong, China and the
Philippines. The club celebrated its tenth anniversary
in February 1941 with a dinner in the Rooftop Garden Restaurant
at the Hong Kong Hotel.
The gathering storm clouds of war over the whole of Asia
must have cast a somber shadow on the mood of Rotary gatherings
as the thirties gave way to the forties.
Yet few members could have realized that the meeting on
2nd December 1941, when they heard Mr James Lee give a
talk with slides on "The Splendor of Peking",
would be their last chance to meet in freedom and in fellowship
for four years.
In July 1945 came the liberation of Hong Kong and the
city's long process of rebuilding a normal pattern of
life. In November of that year, a Past President, Dr Arthur
W. Woo, called a party of friends together for lunch at
the Cafe de Chine. Many happy atmosphere reminded him
of Rotary activities in the "old days". This
was evidently the cue Dr Woo had been awaiting. In reply
he suggested that the work of Rotary be revived.
E.J.R. Mitchell undertook to plan a programme of events,
beginning with a meeting which was, in effect, the re-inauguration
of the club. In January 1946 the first postwar Rotary
lunch in Hong Kong took place at the Gloucester Hotel's
restaurant. A motion passed noted that the Club had "been
in abeyance" since 1941 and stated that it had now
been restarted.
It was revealed the club still had $7,000 in the bank,
but this was frozen under wartime rules and so funds were
urgently needed. Members were asked to pay their half-yearly
fee of $15 immediately, which they did. The Club came
back to life. It was resolved that future meetings would
take place at the same venue.
There were, of course, some other formalities still to
be undergone. Rotary International's headquarters was
contacted with an application for readmission, a request
that was readily approved on the basis that the Club had
never really ceased to exist. A duplicate copy of the
Charter was dispatched from the US. Many of the Club records,
previously assumed to have been destroyed, were found
in a metal box at the former Sports Club in King's Building,
Connaught Road.
The postwar years were a time of challenge of Hong Kong.
A massive increase in population, caused in the main by
an influx of refugees from China, stretched community
and welfare services to breaking point. It was a time
of particular need fro the type of help groups such as
Rotary could provide. The decision was made to have not
just one but many Rotary Clubs in the Territory.
The result of this was that from 1947, when the Rotary
Club of Macau was formed, until the present day, the spirit
of Rotary is now witnessed in no fewer than 48 clubs in
what has become District 3450.
In the context of Hong Kong, Rotary can be said to have
created greater Cohesion within the community. As the
former Hong Kong Governor, Sir Alexander Gratham commented
when he addressed the Club in 1956: "If I were asked
what one thing more than any other brought the Chinese
and non-Chinese together, as we now take it for granted,
it was the establishment of The Rotary Club of Hong Kong".
Today, The Rotary Club of Hong Kong is known as the "Mother
Club" of Rotary International District 3450, and
it is from our Club that the Rotary movement branched
out in this District.
Thus, the Mother and Premier Club continues to play an
important role in community, vocational and international
services; always bearing in mind the Rotary motto of Service
Above Self. members of the Club are called upon to expound
"The Four Way Test": Is it TRUTH? Is it FAIR
to all concerned? Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIP"
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
Membership of the Club comprises many of Hong Kong's most
distinguished citizens who came together in a desire to
serve. Rotarians are expected to perform diligently their
share of service to the Club, to their vocations, to the
community, and towards better international understanding.
They are bound by the Club's Constitution and By-Laws
under Rotary International.
The Club has celebrated its Golden Jubilee, and subsequently
its Diamond Jubilee. The services it accomplished are
numerous and vast, and extended to all sectors of our
society. In recent years, we have worked on programmes
that benefited the people of the People's Republic of
China. The Club's projects are too varied to recount,
and they include, scholarships, student exchange programmes,
orphanages, polioplus campaign (to eradicate polio by
the year 2000), 3-H programme (that of hunger, health
and humanity), elderly homes, hospice care, and so on.
Since Tuesday, 18th June 1996, a group of Rtns from the
Club together with Rotarians from Rotary Clubs from around
the world, have been holding informal meetings in Beijing
on a weekly basis. In May 1996, Rtns hosted a splendid
100 year's birthday party for PP of the former Rotary
Club of Shanghai (1934-35), Rtn Percy Chu.
Thus bound by our ideal of service and fellowship, the
Club has surged forth to the New Millennium to serve the
Community. |
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