Fanny Holt Ames spent a little less than two days in Hong Kong, still a British colony in 1954. The restaurants she mentioned are gone, but Eileen Kershaw, Ltd., purveyor of flowers and gifts (apparently including fine porcelain and jade), survived the transition to Communist China. Fanny also mentions shopping at Hong Kong Mary's and meeting the woman herself. Hong Kong Mary Sue, seen in the picture below from 1945, was originally from San Francisco. She started a restaurant in the city before World War II, but soon added a fleet of sampans that collected trash from all arriving ships. Anything valuable was recycled. Mary managed to survive the Japanese occupation of the city and parlay her earnings into buying other Hong Kong properties. No city in the world loves its business success stories more than Hong Kong so Mary became quite the legend there.
Fanny also mentioned visiting the Tiger Balm Gardens and finding it hideous. Tiger Balm Gardens was an 8 acre amusement park founded in 1935, and it apparently was as tasteful as the knick-knack counter of a bad Chinese restaurant with the added downer of really awful looking erotic statues. It was demolished in 2004. An artist named Brian the Brain is offering a suitably tacky poster of the famous dragon wall for a mere $44 at his website. Please do not show this poster to a member of the Lion's Club-I'm used to their Christmas/Easter display at the Rockery, and don't want them getting ideas for changes. The pagoda on the property was worth a look, however.
After this short stay in Hong Kong , the President Monroe sailed for Manila where we will find Fanny next week.
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