Cold Case - Kowloon-Canton Railway

Most historians, like all good noir-ish detectives or private eyes, have cold-case files piled up in a desk drawer somewhere. The research projects that never got properly started, or had to be abandoned for lack of evidence. Promising leads that tailed off or simply led to dead ends. They get shelved rather than binned in the hope that something will eventually turn up which will set the wheels in motion again. Flipping a blue flashing light on the roof. Spurring us into action as some new source material provides us with a fresh scent to set the tracker dogs onto; something which might enable us to pursue our enquiries to a successful conclusion.

Kowloon Railway Terminal before demolition, all that remains today is the clock tower.

I have one such cold case regarding the opening of the Kowloon-Canton Railway (KCR) in 1910. And, as with all good noir-ish detective stories, it begins with a location, a suspect, a probable motive, and a part confession. All the signs are there, but I still just need that one crucial bit of evidence to clinch it and make my case watertight. It all began with a passage in Paul Henry King’s memoir, In the Chinese Customs Service: A Personal Record of Forty-Seven Years: 

“The last Viceregal function I assisted at was on the 7th April, 1909, on the occasion of laying the foundation-stone of the Terminal Station of the Canton-Kowloon Railway at Tai-sha-tan, just outside the East Gate of Canton City. The Governor of Hong-Kong and the Colonial Secretary came up for the ceremony, which was very well staged and came off without a hitch as far as the Chinese were concerned. It struck some of us that the Hong-Kong Governor's speech seemed to insist rather too much (for good taste) on the benefit to China of railway connection with Hong- Kong. His whole attitude reminded me of Sir Robert Hart's anecdote about Wen Hsiang's remark — "That the British invariably gave good advice to China in an unpalatable form" — and almost produced the impression that he was taking advantage of the occasion to let the Viceroy know what he thought of the Canton Government. However, His Excellency Chang seemed not a penny the worse and beamed on the just and unjust alike, as only a man with a swivel eye can. I was close by their two Excellencies most of the time and enjoyed the situation not a little.” 

This passage came to mind when I was working in Hong Kong over ten years ago. I’d often walked past the old clock tower down by the Star Ferry terminus. It’s all that’s left of the original Kowloon terminal of the KCR line (which still operates today). But it was only when I had a spare day free, and was wondering what to do, that I decided to visit the Railway Museum at the old Tai Po Market Station. This station was taken out of service when the KCR was electrified in the early 1980s. It was decided to preserve the station building, which was built in 1913, due to its unique architectural style which is reminiscent of typical south China temple buildings. Now run by the Hong Kong Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD) the museum is free to visit and consists of the main station building with its original ticket hall, plus a number of railway carriages and a couple of locomotives, all preserved from different eras. It was in one of the station side rooms in which there are display panels explaining the history behind the foundation and construction of the KCR where I came across the following photograph:

Banquet to celebrate laying the foundation stone of the Canton Terminal, 1909.

This image shows Chinese and British officials at a banquet in 1909, celebrating the laying of the foundation stone for the Chinese Section of the line at the Canton Terminus (Tai Sha Tan). Given Paul Henry King’s account of this event in his memoir it seems almost certain that he is present somewhere in this image (or in the close vicinity of it), but where exactly is another question altogether! – I’ve no idea if he’d be seated at the top table or if perhaps he’s one of the chaps seated at the two tables flanking the sides, perhaps with his back to the camera? All the versions of this photo which I’ve since found are far too grainy or faded to see sufficient detail. Nevertheless, it’s fascinating to think he’s there and that this is a photograph he’d recognise intimately. But what really caught my eye that day were the following two photographs which the caption indicates were taken about a year or so later:

Lo Wu, 1st Ocober 1910.

The first shows the Acting Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Henry May, and his wife “inspecting the tracks”, and the second is a more general view of the guests attending the opening of Lo Wu station on 1^st October 1910, where the Chinese and British sections of the KCR met. You’ve probably noticed that the same unnamed yet clearly eminent Gent appears front and centre of both images. In the second he appears to be standing with a woman whom we might suppose to be his wife, and to his left are three Chinese officials, who – to my mind’s eye – look like they might possibly be local Customs officials. This could also make sense if the unidentified Gent is Paul Henry King, then Commissioner of the Chinese Customs Service at Canton. In terms of dress and demeanour, the couple do look a lot like the photos I’ve seen of Paul Henry King and his wife, Veronica (also known as Madge, but whose real name was Alice Margaret). His moustache and his distinctive collar, neck tie and dress coat do seem similar to one of the fellows seated at the top table of the 1909 Canton photo – if you squint really, really hard! … Initially I couldn’t help feeling really excited – but I knew I’d have to check my facts before I properly congratulated myself on the 'sure certainty' of my remarkable find. It’s important never to let imagination impinge too far upon instinct and so over-determine an inclination towards an idea, no matter how probable or likely it might outwardly seem ... Nothing is ever certain until it is totally clarified beyond any doubt and backed up by genuine, demonstrable proof.

Lo Wu, 1st October 1910.

So firstly, I went back to Paul King’s memoir. Naturally, I didn’t have a copy of the book with me at the time of my visit to Hong Kong. I could only very vaguely remember the passage in its broadest outline. And so later on, re-reading it closely, I encountered a problem. The passage quoted above was preceded by the following sentence: “But my sands at Canton were now running out, as I had been granted two years' leave of absence as soon as my successor could take over the port.” And the concluding lines of the passage (and of that chapter) only reinforced the fact: “I handed over charge of the Canton Customs to my old friend and colleague, J. F. Oisen (now Danish Minister in Peking), on the 8th May, 1909, and left for Hong-Kong on the 11th May. I had paid a farewell visit to the Viceroy on the 10th, and he did me the great honour of coming in person to see me off. All our friends—native and foreign—did the same, and overwhelmed us with kindness and regrets.”

Lo Wu, 1st October 1910.

The pages of the subsequent chapter only bore this point out further. The Kings were “back home” in the UK when the event at Lo Wu had taken place. They didn’t return to China until March 1911. But I couldn’t help staring at the figure in the two photos. The more I looked the more I wanted to doubt the published memoir with its black and white dates regulating the text to a clear timetable of events. I suspect Paul King may well have kept a diary which he’d most likely referred to religiously whilst writing his memoir, like a metronome keeping the chapters neatly and orderly to time. But I kept coming back to those images of Lo Wu. The chap in the photos looked so similar to Paul King to my mind’s eye that it niggled me – I wanted to be sure. If this fellow wasn’t Paul King, who was he?

The inaugural train at Lo Wu, 1st October 1910.

  

The only other way I could think of to be completely certain was to go back to the original source and see if anyone I knew in the LCSD might have access to the original photograph, and to ask them what records there might be connected to it which might name the individuals it pictures. A friend of mine who works at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum very kindly said she’d look into it for me and see what she could find. A few weeks later I received an email from her. She’d spoken to a couple of colleagues, but all they could find amounted to much the same information as that which was used in the captions given on the wall at the Railway Museum. There were no names known other than that of the Acting Governor and his wife. Hence all my lines of enquiry and all my leads in this process of investigation didn’t just reach the end of the line, but rather firmly hit the buffers and could go no further. Whoever this couple is remains a mystery to me. – Unless something else turns up, in due course, which manages to get me back on the tracks and under full steam again. Until then, all I can do is stare at these black and white figures in these grainy old photographs and wonder who these people are. 

Lo Wu, 1st October 1910.

Meanwhile, despite the clear evidence of Paul King’s own memoir, there’s still a part of me that doubts the seemingly incontrovertible evidence of his own writing. Hence, whenever I look at these photographs, I still can’t help vacillating between my ardent wish for it to be the Kings (simply based on the similarities of their looks, their dress and their demeanour – but then, how many eminent Edwardians all look exactly like this? – Answer: Lots of them!), and my equally strong scepticism, which wonders if either the photos or the memoir might perhaps have been incorrectly dated? – The fact-checking historian in me still obsessively requires that I see the names (theirs or someone else’s) pencilled on the back of the photograph, or typed up on a guest list published in some forgotten contemporary local newspaper, or someone else’s memoir which says they were or weren’t there in the same company as Paul and Veronica (or, more likely, their doppelgangers) at this event on that particular day in October 1910 … 

Canton Railway Terminal, 1st October 1910.

But then, these are exactly the kind of sources which might very well suddenly appear as if out of nowhere; stumbled upon in some obscure publication, hidden in some library somewhere; chanced upon by accident whilst looking out for something else entirely. The key documents that will answer the riddle as to who this man really is and why he was there – was he the man who replaced Paul King in his post at Canton? Quite possibly. – If I look at all the facts, my prime suspects are much more likely to be J. F. Oisen, or the unnamed Colonial Secretary. – But the niggle is that need to know. And that’s the joy and the frustration of doing this kind of research. It goes in fits and starts sometimes. Answering one question may well simply end up posing another in its place. Hence, tugging at threads which get knotted for a time, but then someday suddenly and unexpectedly start to unravel again. Like all good detective yarns, cold cases are never truly closed cases, just stories which haven’t been concluded – yet. – Best to keep ‘em peeled, eh! You never know what might turn up …

The modern Kowloon-Canton Train passing through Sha Tin Station, 2008.

Postscript: (21st January 2020) - Well, at long last it seems like the cold case I've described above might finally be closed ... Late last year I was made aware that Paul Henry King's diaries were due to be sold at an auction at Sotheby's, which was held on 12th November 2019 (Sale L19405 - Lot 277, see here), and so I was given a chance to see the contents pages fronting each diary, including the volume covering 1910 - and yes, it seems clear that, as indicated in his published memoir, Paul King was not in China at the time of the ceremony at Lo Wu. Hence it very likely is not him nor his wife in the photos of that event. Who these individuals are remains an open question; maybe it is J. F. Oisen, who took over from King as Canton Customs Commissioner, or perhaps it is someone else entirely? ... As is often the way when conducting historical research, answering one question, more often than not, tends to beget yet another question - and so it goes, question after question after question ... 

Andrei Makine - An Homage to Lost Time

I first discovered the writer Andreï Makine in the pages of the TLS in 2000. It was a review of his novel, Once Upon the River Love. I remember the review intrigued me so much that I went straight to one of the big bookshops on London’s Charing Cross Road (Books, etc. – sadly now long gone) where I found and bought a copy. Just reading the first page I sensed there was something special about the way these words were crafted (and so ably translated, as are all Makine’s books, by Geoffrey Strachan). I was hooked. I went on to read his subsequent books, almost keeping pace at first, as each was translated into English. I began to see how certain themes recur in his novels. These seemed to give hints and clues, suggestive of the author’s own background. Indeed, Makine’s own story is as intriguing as his plotlines. Over the years, the interviews with him which I’ve read in newspapers and magazines tend to give very scant detail about this author and his life – reading them, it’s almost as if he is one of his own characters, so deftly yet sparingly sketched out. A loose yet fluid set of lines, roughing out the suggestion of a figure, lightly delineated on a blank white page. A form upon which we can overlay the contours of a character. Indeed, it seems all too easy for us to project something of our own imaginations as readers, conjuring up the picture of a man as exile, as a writer, as an artist.

The fact’s state: he was born in the USSR, in Krasnoyarsk in 1957. He was allowed by the Soviet authorities to come to Paris in 1987 as part of a teacher’s exchange programme, where – despite the thawing of the Cold War – he defected to the West. He was granted asylum. Lived rough for a while, including two weeks living in a cemetery. He settled in Paris, and has lived there ever since. Absolutely committed to a writer’s life. His major breakthrough came with the publication of his novel, Le Testament Français, in 1995. A novel which achieved the unprecedented feat of winning both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Medicis, as well as the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens. Writing in French prose so finely crafted he had to claim his books were translations from Russian originals in order to persuade his publishers that he’d actually written them himself. Before coming to France, in the Soviet Union he’d been a teacher. He’d also served in the Red Army, tank corps; posted to conflict zones in Angola and Afghanistan. He was an orphan, raised by his grandmother. Makine may well even be an adopted name; the grandmother perhaps not his grandmother after all. Such are the sketchy details, the bare bones of possible facts which seem to beg for elaboration. Facts that suggest so many questions, but how to sift through such layers so lightly laid down – they seem so thin, almost opaque, like the thin leaves of the thinnest onion-skin Bible paper. Not so much the whole truth, but rather nothing of the truth at all? – Less of a life’s testament than a palimpsest of speculation. Questions and echoes.

But perhaps the facts are all there? – Hiding in plain sight. After all, the themes which recur most frequently across his novels seem to echo those bare facts known of the author’s life. The grandmother who speaks French. Looking down the barrel of a tank gun in a conflict zone. An exiled writer seeking to reconnect with the past. Familiar tropes indeed. Albeit refracted in myriad ways which make the truth even harder to pin down. But then that’s the essence of all his stories right there. It’s not so much about the truth as more about the feeling. The reckoning with an unfathomable past. How the individual is lost in the immensity of history. Engulfed and overwhelmed, yet somehow surviving. Bobbing back up to the surface. Constantly. Carried along by the tidal flow of time and events. And eventually set down on the wayside of history to think, ponder and reflect on all of it. What it means, what matters, and, moreover, what doesn’t matter at all. Life isn’t lived in the details of history, but rather that’s where a life is lost. It’s only in the present resurfacing that through recollection some sort of sense can be made of it all. But even then, all those certainties unfathomed and arrived at can all be swept away again in the merest blink of an instant. After which, once emerged again; shot out from the other side of the welter, can we begin to recalibrate, realign, reset and remember from a different vantage point. Life is fluid. Unchanging in its ceaseless changeability. Like Heraclitus’ river.

Makine is often compared to other writers: To Proust. Tolstoy. Bonin. Chekov. Balzac. Stendal. Solzhenitsyn. But I tend to think this is simply a lazy journalistic take. He’s Russian; he writes in French. Perhaps at best though such comparisons are a means to attempt to signpost him, pointing as definitively as possible in the direction of truly great literature. The grand tradition of the Great Russian novel. A la recherché … and all that. Which is fine by me. I think Makine is probably one of our greatest living writers. But I think in time he will come to be seen as standing amidst this august company on his own terms. For the distinctiveness of his own voice and for the themes he chooses to explore and unpick that most clearly characterise our own era. In that sense I genuinely think he is one of the foremost writers of our times. And I say this because he captures our present preoccupation with the past so well. Such that he is capturing not just the zeitgeist of the present, but that he is doing so in a way which is refracting even within the rapidly changing nature of our times. When I began reading his works there was a sense of nostalgia mixed with a fascination for the incomprehensible. As a child growing up in the 1980s, at the tail end of the Cold War (not that we really knew it was the tail end at the time), the Second World War still didn’t seem all that long ago. It was still a living memory, as was the First World War even. But the world I knew, the world I was growing up in, seemed utterly removed from those two calamitous eras. Life was now infinitely better and improved. There was still a looming existential threat, nuclear holocaust and mutually assured destruction; but it all seemed so very far away. And as the thaw set in with the era of Glasnost and Perestroika everything seemed to be heading in the right direction. The end of the decade only confirmed it. The Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Velvet Revolution (overlooking the inconvenient anomalies of Tiananmen Square and the former Yugoslavia) – the 1990s now seem like halcyon days, all taken so much for granted. Requiem for the East bridges this divide perfectly, yet it also manages to highlight the undercurrents which persist (largely unseen but there in plain sight) into the present day.

Now though such things are getting harder not to see. It feels like we’re stuck in a deracinating chaos of rising nationalism, xenophobia, gameshow politicians summoning up goose-stepping delusions towards a nostalgia for broken empires and far flung wars, domestic terrorism, austerity, minimum living wages, zero-hours contracts, food banks, gold-plated elevators, expense claim scandals relating to superfluous second homes with pay-as-you-go pornography, duck houses and moats. Brexit as tragedy, farce and folly. Remembrance Day charity campaigns in which children wearing T-shirts with the slogan “Future Soldier” emblazoned across the front parade holding giant plastic red poppies – Lest we Forget, and, Never Again … Lions led by Donkeys; twas ever thus, and, so it seems, still it is. Hollow words parroted for unthinking times. Hidden agendas parodied into reality. “Fake News” fabricating a new set of Emperor’s clothes to distract from a corrupt and greedy global system which somehow manages to sustain itself as one economy after another tanks itself. Third World Debt. First World Guilt. Climate Change Denial. We’re not waving, we’re drowning in the largest gyre of plastic waste ever recorded choking the oceans and being ingested in the very food we all eat and the water we drink. What the hell has happened to all our bright tomorrows? That happy future heralded by the chants of ‘Freiheit’ – ‘Freedom’ and the ‘wind of change’ which we heard sung of so loudly and optimistically in the 1990s? – Makine himself has spoken out against these First World delusions and the duplicity underlying them in perhaps the most public forum he could, when being inducted into the Académie Française in 2016.

When I first began reading Andreï Makine’s novels they appealed to me because I simply couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to live through the horrors and deprivations of the two World Wars. What it must have been like to lead a life defined by duty and self-sacrifice. Even though I’d heard my grandparents telling their life stories, describing what it was really like. I could never properly picture what it would have been like had I had to live through it. The UK is unhealthily obsessed with this period – we were taught about it over and over at school, it’s on our television screens every night, either in documentaries (Dan Snow, Dan Snow, and more Dan Snow…), or sit-coms (think Dad’s Army, Allo Allo, Goodnight Sweetheart, etc.) – and this has been a constant since I was a child. Our Finest Hour. Never to be forgotten. And don’t you forget it! … But likewise, as a child of the Cold War, I was fascinated by what life might be like had I lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain. I vividly remember watching the parades of Soviet missile transporters passing through Moscow shown on the TV News. It was both chilling and beguiling. I later got a taste of what it might have been like when I stayed with a family in East Berlin in 1993. Makine’s novels give a window into that lost world of fear, labour camps, the KGB and Joseph Stalin forever looking over your shoulder and listening in on you. Of loyalties betrayed. The many veils of idealism and ideology. Naivety met by the bluntness suddenly emerging from the shadowy fog of reality. The deep lacerations of individual lives coerced, distorted, twisted and broken as so deftly described in A Hero’s Daughter.

His novels are often stories within stories. Not so much Russian dolls, but rather that strangely displaced schism of the mind – the here and now attempting to comprehend and contend with the past and its echoes. His novels always manage to expertly explore the place of the solitary human within that wider history, of the individual within that vast inhuman machinery of the State, and of States at war. Yet within this giant whirligig of time he manages to find small but universal anchors in the form of love, music, personal connection, links which lead ultimately to some form of redemption or reparation. The Life of an Unknown Man captures this perfectly. His novels can seem outwardly bleak but losing yourself within the sonorous nature of Makine’s prose they become transformative, and they somehow always manage to end on a profound note of hope and optimism. Nihilism has its silver linings. No matter how bad things become in the end the individual holds true. Hope shines through. Time is lost, but time is also regained even if it is reshaped – time and its recall remould us, reader and character, anew. This is the process and the point of indulging in or undertaking such strenuous meditations on the past. Experiencing the emotions of people other than ourselves. We know nothing if we don’t know what empathy truly is.

In that sense all Makine’s books are an homage to the indomitable spirit of ordinary souls who manage to remain unbroken by the malicious intent of the collective machine. The essential soul of all his characters ultimately survive and emerge unscathed. They represent a poetic homage to hope as the essential element of the human condition. And I hope, reading Makine, particularly in these troubled times; I hope that his books prove to be prescient and right. I still believe in that indomitable spirit of revolution which marked my teenage years so indelibly in the early 1990s – hence I hope our here and now is simply the story within a story that I will one day tell to my niece and nephews, and them to their children someday too. When the bright new tomorrows have eventually returned.