How names can tell us a story, Part 1: Kwok Acheong

Almost wherever you are there will be streets named after town worthies, or national eminences, or significant entities and events. Sometimes, particularly in larger towns, the names can reveal additional historical detail. What the main trades were and where they concentrated, for example. In Hong Kong over one hundred street names reveal details of Hong Kong’s maritime story, particularly in its early decades. One of them, long lost – or perhaps mislaid – I have recently rediscovered. The streets – there were two – were named after a major early Chinese shipowner, mover and shaker. Kwok Acheong may not now be much celebrated, but he was one of the founders of the Tung Wah Hospital and at one time Hong Kong’s biggest taxpayer.