Sir Boshan Wei-Yuk (1849–1921) was born in Hong Kong in 1849, his family from Heungshan in Guangdong; his father Wei Kwong was the Chinese comprador of the Mercantile Bank. Tutored in Chinese at home for ten years and then educated at the Central School, he went to Britain in 1867 to study at Stoneygate School in Leicester and Dollar Academy in Scotland, one of the first Chinese students educated in Western Europe. Returning in 1872 he joined the Mercantile Bank, rising in 1882 to the comprador post his father had held, and left only in 1910, sixty-three years of service by father and son. Made an unofficial Justice of the Peace in 1882, he was elected a director of Tung Wah Hospital in 1880 and served as its chairman in 1887, helped found Po Leung Kuk and became a permanent director in 1893, and in 1907 worked with Ho Kai to secure the building of Kwong Wah Hospital as its founding director. During the 1894 plague outbreak he mediated with the Chinese community on the government's behalf and persuaded families to accept isolation and disinfection, for which he received the anti-plague medal. Appointed an unofficial member of the Legislative Council in 1896, the fourth Chinese to sit there since the colony's founding, he succeeded Ho Kai as Senior Unofficial Member in March 1914 and retired in October 1917; in office he helped reconcile the British authorities and New Territories villagers so that the territory was absorbed smoothly in 1898. A leading figure in the District Watch Committee from 1880, he helped establish its committee in 1891 and was made its adviser in 1920; after leaving the bank he traded on his own account and joined Ho Kai, Au Tak, Tso Seen-wan and Chau Siu-ki in the Kai Tak Land Investment Company to build the Kai Tak Bund garden city on reclaimed land in Kowloon Bay, the ground later becoming the site of Kai Tak Airport. He also held the CMG and became the third Chinese in Hong Kong's history to be knighted. He died on 16 December 1921, aged 72.
Sir Boshan Wei-Yuk embodied the Chinese elite of early colonial Hong Kong: a comprador at the centre of its finance, a mediator between Chinese and European society through Tung Wah and Po Leung Kuk, and the go-between during the 1894 plague; as Senior Unofficial Member of the Legislative Council he witnessed the gradual entry of Chinese leaders into colonial governance.
Achievements
- 1887 · Served as chairman of Tung Wah Hospital
- 1896 · Appointed an unofficial member of the Legislative Council, the fourth Chinese to sit there since the colony's founding
- 1914 · Succeeded Ho Kai as Senior Unofficial Member of the Legislative Council