Mr Robert Hung Ngai Ho was born in 1932 in Hong Kong into a time of raging divisions within Chinese society. International relations were also unsettled as the scarred aftermath of the First World War peace settlement began to unleash the forces that would propel the world into an even greater conflict at the end of the 1930s.

At the time, the Ho family was one of the most influential and extensive in the British-administered territory, with connections that stretched way beyond the city into many areas of China and the West. China was seething with internal conflict between Kuomintang Nationalist and Communist troops. Japan, which had already annexed Manchuria in 1931, threatened further incursion. If not exactly serene, Hong Kong remained a more stable base in comparison.

Unconventionally for a scion from an affluent Hong Kong family, Robert Hung Ngai’s father, Robert Shai Lai Ho, had joined the Chinese armed forces and by 1932, was an officer in “Young Marshal” Zhang Xueliang’s Northeast Army on the Nationalist side. Even more unusual, he was a western-trained artillery specialist, who had studied at renowned military academies in the UK and France. At the time of Robert Hung Ngai’s birth, his father was about to head to North America for more training at the prestigious United States Army Command and General Staff College in Kansas.

Robert Hung Ngai’s grandfather was self-made business tycoon Sir Robert Ho Tung, by then about to turn 70, yet still with his finger firmly on the pulse of most of the significant corporate sectors and political events in the territory and beyond. Sir Robert’s influence was enabled through directorships, property ownership and strong networks ranging from family ties to alumni, business and community relations, and connections to government decision-makers and eminent social figures in and outside Hong Kong.

Growing up as part of such a prominent family in Hong Kong appears to have been a totally different experience to that of many such families today. Despite the turbulence just beyond the border and the flood of people who pushed up the city’s population from 850,000 to 1.6 million between 1931 and 1941, personal security did not seem to be a dominant issue. Robert Hung Ngai can recall walking to school on his own or with family members, and being able to scoot off down from Idlewild, the palatial Mid-Levels mansion where he lived with his grandparents, to view the latest stamps at a local philatelist’s store. On such occasions, he would head down Ladder Street, on past Kau U Fong, to reach Queen’s Road Central. “Of course, I didn’t have any money to buy anything, but the shop owner took a liking to me and would show me stamps and say how valuable they were. I always enjoyed going to have a chat with him,” Mr Ho said, “and I would do that on my own.”

With his parents usually away from Hong Kong and his grandparents busy with their own endeavours, the young boy and his day-to-day care was left to a trusted and much-respected amah.

Life with amah Kwan Lai (‘Kwan Je’)

“Ah Kwan stayed with me from when I was 12 days old and was a part of our family until she died. When I was living with my grandparents, they paid for all the expenses I incurred for food, medical fees, and tuition, but Ah Kwan really raised me. She would stay with me when I was sick, she nagged me, she taught me to do my homework, even though she was basically illiterate and could only sign her name. Before the war, she took care of everything, settling the account with my grandfather Sir Robert and grandmother Lady Margaret on how much she had spent for my upkeep.

“During the war, she travelled with my mother, sister and I when we escaped from the Japanese in Hong Kong. When we were walking through Guangxi, we hired a sedan chair because my sister was young and my mother could not walk all the way. If my mother was sitting there, my sister would be on her lap. When it was my turn, I would sit in the chair with Ah Kwan.

When Ah Kwan died in the 1990s, my wife and I had already immigrated to Canada. She had wanted to go into an old age home, but she had been with our family for so long, my father said: ‘Absolutely not. You are not going there.’ So she stayed with the family at Ho Tung Gardens until very close to the end.

“I have placed a memorial tablet for her in the Tung Lin Kok Yuen Buddhist temple I helped to establish in Vancouver. Every time I go there, I pay my respects.”