How the Irish Made Hong Kong

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They provided nine of Hong Kong’s 28 governors, cured the city of tuberculosis, built and managed schools that have transformed the lives of tens of thousands of its people and…

They provided nine of Hong Kong’s 28 governors, cured the city of tuberculosis, built and managed schools that have transformed the lives of tens of thousands of its people and won four Olympic medals.

Who are these people? They are the Irish people who have played an extraordinary role in the construction and development of the city. Their story is being told for the first time in “The Irish in Hong Kong”, published this month by Earnshaw Books.

The first governor, Sir Henry Pottinger, was from Northern Ireland. William Caine, the first Chief Magistrate who founded what became the police force, came from County Kildare. From the 1840s to the present day, Irish people have worked here as soldiers, policemen, judges, civil servants, lawyers, businessmen, priests, musicians and jockeys.

They include five Chief Justices, priests who ran the Wah Yan and La Salle schools, champion jockeys, the Belfast woman most responsible for the success of the International Rugby Sevens and the one most familiar to the city’s residents today – Siobhan Haughey.

She is the first Hong Kong athlete to win four Olympic medals, in swimming – two silvers at the 2020 Tokyo games and two bronzes at the Paris 2024 games.

She is the perfect HK-Irish joint venture. Her mother is a Hong Kong lady and her father an Irish accountant. Her paternal granduncle was Charles Haughey, three times Taoiseach (Prime Minister) between 1979 and 1992, a household name in Ireland.

Poolside at the Paris Olympics, she had two teams cheering her on – one from Hong Kong and one from Ireland! She speaks Cantonese, English and Mandarin.

The book was a joint venture between me and David Costello, the second Irish consul-general in the city, between 2018 and 2023. He commissioned the book and contributed greatly to it. We both believed that it was a story that had not been told.

In July 1979, at the Ruttonjee Sanatorium, I had the good fortune to meet Columban Sister Mary Aquinas, a doctor from County Galway.

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