Sir Kai Ho Kai (1859-1914), courtesy name Dik-chi, was born in Hong Kong on 21 March 1859, son of the Rev. Ho Fuk-tong; his sister Ho Miu-ling married Wu Ting-fang, who became the first Chinese unofficial member of the Legislative Council. Educated at the Central School, he went to Britain in 1871, entered the University of Aberdeen in 1875 to study medicine and graduated in 1879 as the first Chinese professional physician, then read law at Lincoln's Inn, being called to the bar in 1881; the next year he returned to Hong Kong with his English wife Alice Walkden, who died in 1884 and after whom he later helped name a hospital. In 1887, with the London Missionary Society and Dr Patrick Manson, he founded the Alice Memorial Hospital, whose attached College of Medicine for Chinese became the forerunner of the University of Hong Kong's medical faculty and where Sun Yat-sen studied. Appointed an unofficial member of the Legislative Council in 1890, he served for twenty-four years, speaking often on Chinese rights, public health and urban development, and was Senior Unofficial Member from 1906 to 1914; he moved the motion to preserve the Sung Wong Toi relic, leading to the 1899 ordinance protecting the site. During the Boxer crisis of 1900 he advocated the independence of the two Kwangs and, with Hu Li-yuan, wrote the reform treatise Xin Zheng Zhen Quan, and he also wrote regularly in the press on current affairs, shaping Chinese public opinion. In 1909 he chaired the donating board of the University of Hong Kong's preparatory committee, helping bring about its opening in March 1912, and in 1912 he was knighted, the first Chinese in Hong Kong to receive the honour. In 1914 he and his in-law Au Tak founded the Kai Tak Land Investment Company to build the Kai Tak Bund garden city on reclaimed land in Kowloon Bay; he died on 21 July 1914, aged 55, leaving debts after that investment failed. A man versed in both Eastern and Western learning, he combined medical and legal practice with public service spanning medicine, law, education and town planning.
Ho Kai epitomised the late nineteenth-century Chinese elite in Hong Kong: a physician and barrister who used the Legislative Council and public life to advance medicine, education and urban development, and a key midwife of the University of Hong Kong, his career tracing a distinctive path of Chinese participation in colonial governance.
Achievements
- 1887 · Founded the Alice Memorial Hospital with Dr Patrick Manson; its College of Medicine for Chinese became the forerunner of HKU's medical faculty
- 1890 · Appointed an unofficial member of the Legislative Council and served for twenty-four years
- 1912 · Knighted, the first Chinese in Hong Kong to receive the honour; the University of Hong Kong opened the same year