利希慎

繁體中文

利希慎（1880–1928），名輯世，字遷羨，廣東開平人，利氏家族的創業者。他年少時在美國受教育，十七歲隨父移居香港，入讀皇仁書院，畢業後曾任教於母校，其後轉任滙豐銀行職員；他也曾在馬來亞做報館翻譯、開鋸木廠，並在仰光創辦雙德豐船務公司，被派回香港任經理。1924年，他以三百八十萬元向怡和洋行購入銅鑼灣東角一帶土地，原擬興建鴉片提煉廠，適逢港府宣布禁售鴉片，遂改為發展利園山，並註冊利希慎置業有限公司，即今日希慎興業的母公司，為家族地產王國奠下基礎；今日利園山道、利舞臺廣場、波斯富街、恩平道、新寧道、開平道等街道，皆由這片土地而來。1928年他因澳門鴉片專賣權糾紛興訟，勝訴後不久，於4月30日中午在中環九如坊至威靈頓街之間遭槍殺，身中三槍當場死亡，兇手逃去無蹤，案件至今未破，成為香港最著名的懸案之一。

English

Lee Hysan (1880–1928), whose given name was Jip-sai, was the founder of the Lee family fortune in Hong Kong and a native of Kaiping in Guangdong. Educated in the United States in his youth, he moved to Hong Kong with his father at seventeen and attended Queen's College, later teaching there and working for HSBC; he was also a newspaper translator and sawmill owner in Malaya and founded the Shuang Tak Fung shipping company in Rangoon, which posted him back to Hong Kong as its manager. In 1924 he bought the East Point land in Causeway Bay from Jardine Matheson for HK$3.8 million, intending an opium refinery; when the government banned the opium trade he developed it instead as the Lee Garden hill estate, incorporating Lee Hysan Estates — the parent of today's Hysan Development — and laying the foundation of the family's property empire. Streets such as Lee Garden Road, the Lee Theatre site, Percival Street, Yan Ping Road, Sunning Road and Hoi Ping Road all trace back to that land. In 1928, after winning a libel action over Macau's opium monopoly, he was shot dead at midday on 30 April between Kau Yu Fong and Wellington Street in Central, hit by three bullets; the killer was never caught and the case remains one of Hong Kong's most famous unsolved murders.