Trophy

The second oldest known LRC trophy is a simple round silver box with the top inscribed:

L.R.C.
1st Prize
American Handicap
March 12th 1910

availability:
in the possession of a member of the General Committee

1911

Recollection of an eye witness of the period - comparing 1911 to 1939.

"[ In 1911 ] The internal combustion engine has yet to reach Hong Kong. No horn is heard in Victoria's hills and dales. The streets are the unchallenged hunting ground of the pedestrian, the chair-coolie and the common carrier humping his load upon his shoulder. Even the few horse-drawn vehicles have gone these many years, and the only wheeled traffic, besides the trams, is provided by the rickshaw, the [hand] truck and the Sanitary Board dust-carts drawn by oxen and water buffaloes. The reader must therefore visualize a very different and slower city, a city in which petrol pumps and traffic signals give place to shady Banyan trees - and the clatter and screech of gear and break to the sob of the straining coolie.

"At 5 p.m. (at any rate when the northeast monsoon is blowing), the Englishman strolls to the Cricket Club where the immortal 'Tadpole' [Tsui Ting Wa, the groundsman] has rigged up the cricket nets. For tennis he must take a chair to the Ladies' Recreation Club on the middle levels and for polo a rickshaw to East Pointe. Happy Valley still provides the main centre for golf.

"For the Chinese resident things have changed too. With rare exceptions - I speak of the eve of the Revolution - he wears a queue and, for that reason, with rare exceptions none wear Western clothes. None share the foreign sports. Cricket, lawn tennis, football, are not for such as they. To swim is to provoke the devils in the water.

"As for the women, exempting the petty hawker, the sampan woman, the scavenger and the seamstress crouching at the foot of the verandah pillar, none yet ventures into the streets".

1912

LegCo - there are 21 motor cars in Hongkong, of which seven are privately owned, and 14 belong to four garages. No accidents had been caused by the former, while the latter had been responsible for 28 accidents during the 16 months from the 1st January, 1911, to the 30th April, 1912, which resulted in four persons being killed and four seriously injured, a very bad record.

View of Queen's Garden Looking West
c.1920

The Hill-Side Hongkong