While Hongkongers this morning eat their breakfast, few may be aware that on this day exactly 150 years ago the city woke to find that almost its entire European population of about 500 people was in the throes of an attempt to kill them all.
At the time, in the midst of the second opium war, most westerners lived in fear of their Chinese neighbours. Barely 10 years old, Hong Kong 'was a city under siege', according to local historian Arthur Hacker, in Wan Chai, his history of the district.
The British Navy, acting in the interests of merchants trying to sell opium to China, had just blockaded the Pearl River. After bombarding what is now Guangzhou, they were awaiting reinforcements.
Outgunned and unable to attack the European settlement, Yeh Mingchen, the Qing emperor's viceroy for Guangxi and Guangdong, retaliated with a 'terrorist campaign'. Yeh's militia had beheaded 11 Europeans found on the captured steamer Thistle, and there was a 'proliferation of unexplained fires around Hong Kong'. Yeh had placed a bounty on the heads of Europeans, and severed ones (including some stolen from the cemetery in Happy Valley) were displayed in Guangzhou.
'Most households employed a Malay guard armed with a musket to protect them,' writes Hacker, adding that 'British troops supported by French and American sailors patrolled the streets'.
However, on January 15, 1857, no musket could protect the Europeans from the wares of Cheong Ah-lum, who baked most of Hong Kong's bread at the time.
