Streets of Hong Kong Private Walking and Photography Tours

A Guided TOUR Through CLOAK AND DAGGER HONG KONG…

I am pleased to announce an exciting new tour based on the history of intelligence, espionage and similar tales of intrigue in and around Colonial Hong Kong. The chronology of the tour spans roughly from the period shortly preceding the colony’s inception in 1842 through its retrocesion to China in 1997.

the idea

Anyone who knows me knows that I spend a great deal of time reading and for business and pleasure.

Early this past spring, I was reading about one of the all time spy greats, the WWII Russian agent Richard Sorge. My interest in Sorge was an Asian espionage espionage angle, particularly Japan.

Sorge was a Russian agent, who managed to create unofficial cover for himself as a German journalist assigned to Tokyo during World War II. He was able to thoroughly ingratiate himself with the German Ambassador through comradeship and strategic perspicacity. As a result he wound up having a complete run of literally all the secret intelligence in the German Embassy. He also set up a local spy ring that managed to pinch a treasure trove of secret information from the highest echelons of the Japanese military government. It was Sorge in Tokyo who seemingly inexplicably notified the Russians of Hitler’s plan to attack them and furthermore that the Japanese would not attack Russia to the North West but rather China and South East Asia. This allowed Stalin and Soviets to dedicate the bulk of their military resources to defeating the Germans. Incredible! The rest is history.

In the middle of reading the Richard Sorge story, I took stock of all the yarns and anecdotes with an espionage twist stockpiled in my own walking tour repertoire. These sorts of historical nuggets have augmented the bamboo scaffolding of all my walking tours. And this is what brought me to the idea of doing Hong Kong’s first and only intelligence and espionage themed spy tour! They have them in Washington, NYC, London and Berlin. Why not Hong Kong, the so called Berlin of the East?

Well as we all know, talk is cheap and unless one does the requisite study and preparation nothing of substance or seriousness can forward. I wasn’t interested in doing something silly and I am mindful of the fact that there are plenty of people in Hong Kong who know plenty more about this sort of thing.

I am not and never was a secret agent, intelligence officer or spy, although I have lived and worked in many places where plenty of others most probably were, including Hong Kong. Nevertheless, as a former international lawyer, I was trained to tackle complexity and simplify it for my clients. Things like political risk, cross border contracts and disputes and special situations. No doubt, there were people in the former Soviet block who probably thought an American lawyer doing these sorts of things in Central and Eastern Europe in the early 90s could be nothing other than a spy. Traveling around with an IBM laptop and an HP printer in an aluminum briefcase back then probably did not help. Later, my nascent interest in probably began blooming in London when I started collecting antiquarian books and maps about the “Great Game” in Central Asia.

So here is what I have done. I’ve spent months of free time enjoyably dedicating myself to researching and absorbing as much as possible about the history of intelligence and espionage with particular emphasis on Asia tangentially and Hong in particular. The timeline involved begins with time memorial, Sun Tzu, then runs in sequence through the Age of Exploration, a bit of Ming and Qing, the Opium Wars and China’s “Century of Foreign Humiliations”, the Republican Era, World War II, the Chinese civil war, the Cold War, the Hong Kong Economic Miracle, China’s Reform and Opening Up, the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. I cannot possibly cover these in detail, but I can relate their relevance to the subject at hand. I have never, nor do I ever intend to engage in research by meeting or communicating with any intelligence officer or agent. Sorry Mr Bond.

I’ve been over this before, but now I am doing it through the lens of intelligence and espionage. My sources have been publicly available online records, news clippings, well known and obscure books of espionage fiction and non-fiction, academic articles, television shows and movies.

I have already collected far too much reading material to fit into a 3-4 hour tour. So I have hand picked what I believe to be some of the most intriguing stories that will resonate with folks who are familiar with Hong Kong, Macau and China and yearn for more local knowledge and sizzle.

This is not going to be a tour exclusively targeting spy buffs. It is designed to entertain and inform a wider audience and will incorporate elements of popular culture as well as historical accounts of the exploits of prominent and intriguing Hong Kong notables.

I could go on, but I think this adequately describes the gist of what a participant in Hong Kong Spy Trail can expect.

THE TOUR

This is a 3-4 hour walking tour beginning at the top of Pottinger Street in Central (named after a famous British spy who later became the first Governor of Hong Kong), in front of Tai Kwun, the old Central Police Station, which once hosted Ho Chi Minh as a ‘guest’ (more on that on tour).

As we meander past various local landmarks (some no longer standing), I will spin a memorable yarn recasting each of them through the lens of intelligence, espionage and China Coast intrigue.

The tour will wind up in the recently opened Convention Center MTR Station. At the end of the tour I will provide you with my own “Top Secret” briefing on the subject, including a timeline, character list and bibliography. We will conveniently wind up nearby some welcoming watering holes for agent debriefing.