MRS. ELSIE TU: THE POWER OF ONE … by Daisy Chan

Elsie Tu is still regarded as one of the most influential people in Hong Kong during the half century after World War II. She was both an elected Urban Councilor and Legislative Councilor, and showed much concern for the middle and lower classes. She paid special attention to education, housing, legal matters and social welfare, and was instrumental in establishing the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). She also founded the Mu Kuang English School, and is still a supervisor there at 95 years of age. Her contributions to Hong Kong have brought significant change to people’s lives, and she will long be remembered.

July 2008
ET: Elsie Tu
MC: Margaret Chen

MC: What do you think about today’s teenagers?
ET: I think they are very clever because they know far more than we knew when we were children. They have far more knowledge for them to learn, far more communication and opportunities to learn. However, I worry about young people today because I don’t know what kind of world we’re living in.

MC: You mean from a moral standpoint?
ET: I see that the world is really going topsy turvy. There’s far too much crime and political maneuvering and corruption. I don’t know where technology’s going to lead us. Now, technology is used for another form of crime.

MC: You mean it makes criminals able to communicate faster?
ET: The criminals are always one step ahead of others.

MC: But is this something that you see in Hong Kong, or worldwide?
ET: Worldwide. I think Hong Kong is comparatively better. Everybody finds it’s very peaceful here.

MC: What are some countries you would be most worried about? What are some situations?
ET: European countries, the old colonial countries I think are the most dangerous.

MC: Really? How so?
ET: I think they’ve become degenerate. They’ve had luxuries, they think they own the world, and they’re arrogant – I only speak in generalities. Like every empire, it has its end.

MC: The decline of the Western Civilization?
ET: Yes

MC: Is there any remedy? What would be a possible remedy for this?
ET: Well unless people wake up and see where they’re going I don’t see any remedy. But I don’t think people read. There’s so much entertainment and enjoyment that they haven’t time to think very much.

MC: But is this even in the older leadership generation?
ET: Especially in the leadership generation.

MC: If they’re like that then how do you expect teenagers to learn anything different?
ET: Well I see some teenagers that seem to be struggling against it, and I hope that’s so. I was quite amazed when I saw – remember that obscene sort of film that was shown of the local pop stars? I think that woke up a lot of teenagers in Hong Kong, to think: “What kind of life are these people living? What kind of influences are they going through?”

MC: You think this was a wakeup call? You don’t think they were titillated by the whole scandal?
ET: Well some people of course will not take the lesson from it. Some people will still go ahead and treat them as icons. But there are some who’ve opened their eyes to think, well, what are they after all?

MC: It was quite despicable wasn’t it.
ET: And unfortunately the pop stars and film stars – not particularly in Hong Kong – they seem to think that any kind of life is OK. It’s almost necessary to be like that, to become a big celebrity.

MC: Do you think that they’re excusing themselves? Or they just don’t have a way out?
ET: I think they have no way out, because they’re expected to do that. That’s what’s expected of them.

MC: They’re expected to be outrageous.
ET: Yes.

MC: So for teenagers, these are the people that are held up to be role models in a sense, aren’t they? These pop stars.
ET: We have some pop stars that are good role models, like Jackie Chan. I think he’s a good role model, and I think there are others. But we do have some who, in order to get ahead and become popular, they have to expose themselves and do anything at all.

MC: But for the average teenager, is it something like religion, you think?
ET: You mean what they’re interested in?

MC: No, what would be a thing that could counteract, or balance back, or bring back some sort of stability or some grounding?
ET: I’m more scared of religion than anything else, because there’s so much fundamentalism in religion, and it’s so full of superstition. I would like to see the teenagers open their minds and look at all religions and see the good and bad in all of them – believe what they want, and disbelieve what they don’t want.

MC: So don’t become dogmatic?
ET: Right. Fundamentalism is a big danger now. The far Christian right, the far Muslim right, and some of the crazy Jewish ones, what do you call them – the Zionists.

MC: I think that one of the questions is also about what attracted you to come to Hong Kong, and stay, and commit almost your life to bettering Hong Kong.
ET: Well I think the main thing was that I saw Hong Kong as being a colony where the people were treated unfairly, and where so many children have no education, especially the ones who came in as sort of refugees, they call them. Migrants.

MC: This was back in the…
ET: The 1950s. And I felt that, as a British person, I wanted to try to influence them, the British attitude towards the Chinese people.

MC: You had gone earlier to China, and you were there as a – was it a missionary?
ET: I was a missionary, yes. But I think your young friend made a mistake there and said we were forced out – that’s not true. Some people are spreading that story. We weren’t forced to leave, no. We didn’t really know exactly why we got the impression we should leave, but at that time there was a war between North and South Korea, and the United Nations, of which Britain was a member, was on the South Korean side and the Chinese were on the North Korean side, and we were virtually enemy aliens! We weren’t kicked out; we just felt it was necessary.

MC: What year was that?
ET: 1951. I was there between 1948 and 51 – three years. 18 months under the Nationalist government, and 18 months under the Communists.

MC: Wow, so a really transitional phase!
ET: We were on the road, on the street when the Communists arrived! Everybody was working.

MC: What city was this?
ET: Nanchang, in Jiangshi province. It was the place where Zhou Enlai was very popular.

MC: Is that his hometown?
ET: Yes, there’s a museum there for him now.

MC: Yes he’s wonderful. Besides Hong Kong, were there other places that you might have gone after leaving China? Did you have a sort of, “Where should we go next?” checklist of maybe… Indonesia…
ET: There was a group of us missionaries. And we came to Hong Kong, intending to go to Borneo. When we arrived in Hong Kong, we met some Chinese who had been members of our church in China. And they said, “Stay here.” So it was by sheer chance that I stayed in Hong Kong.

MC: And I think that Hong Kong is really much better for the fact that you stayed.
ET: I’m glad I didn’t go to Borneo because the missionaries that I knew who went to Borneo were so narrow minded I couldn’t live amongst them.

MC: Borneo would be Indonesia.
ET: It was a British colony then

MC: Can I jump into a little bit about the ICAC? I know the story about the police officers. You, at one point, went to Parliament and did a presentation about -
ET: 1966. Well I wasn’t in Hong Kong very long before I discovered this corruption. The first person to tell me about it was an Englishman who’s a doctor. And he said to me, “If you’re interested in fighting against corruption, get yourself a camera and take pictures, and let people see what’s going on. I couldn’t afford a camera – I just had to go and see for myself. Eventually I did get a camera and took pictures, and I was appalled -

MC: What were the pictures of?
ET: Well, for example, I remember taking one picture of a man who was operating a hawker stall right at the emergency entrance of a theatre, which is very dangerous! And when I took my picture, there was a policeman standing watching this man but doing nothing! So there was a policeman and there was the stall operating. And I reported it to the Urban Council when we had a meeting, and the next time we had a meeting, they brought another picture, and said, “No, there’s nobody on that street selling anything!” I said, “Well you could clear the street to take your picture, but I couldn’t bring a policeman on to take mine!”

MC: Wow!
ET: And the main thing was about the minibuses. The minibus drivers were having a terrible time. If they didn’t pay a bribe, some were getting beaten up. And I wrote to the senior superintendent [of the Hong Kong Police] of Kowloon – his office was in Yau Ma Dei, and his name was Peter Godbur. I wrote and told him that these minibus drivers were being forced to pay bribes, and one of the minibus drivers gave me a photograph showing the gangsters collecting the money, and the police watching, because the gangsters collected the money and passed it onto the police you see. And Godbur wrote back to me and said, “I’m afraid your evidence is not correct.”

MC: The end!
ET: No, it wasn’t the end for me. I took a friend, an English lady who was a teacher, and a camera, and I stood in Jordan Road and watched it, and I saw the gangsters collecting money from every driver, and the policemen standing there watching. I got the whole of it and put it in the newspaper. And then it went on television as well. It was TVB at that time; we didn’t have ATV. And the press got hold of this, and they went to see Godbur, and they said, “Did she report this to you?” He said, “No! She didn’t make any report to me!” So then TVB came to me and said, “Did you report it?” And I said, “Yes, there’s the letter, and here’s his answer!”

MC: Wow…
ET: We got a new governor, Murray Maclehose, and he was determined to stamp this corruption out. So he used to collaborate with me, and he began to investigate Godbur, and eventually he was caught. He ran away; he got through the airport because being a policeman, nobody stopped him. And he went to Spain.

MC: Was he ever caught? He was caught though, I think.
ET: Well then he went to England. When I went to England, to the House of Commons, some of the press said to me, “Oh Godbur’s now living in Sutton (I think it was). Would you like to go and visit him?” I said, “No use going to visit him.” They said, “Come on, we’ll take you there and bring you back – it’s quite a long way.” I said, “OK.” I rang the bell, and a boy came out. And I said, “Is your father there, Mr. Godbur?” “Oh,” he said, “He’s not here.” And he slammed the door. Eventually they got him, I think, and they took him back. And he had the darned cheek to ask his lawyers to get me to be a witness on his behalf, to say the man who had reported him, the man who was going to give evidence against him was a liar. So I said, “Well, I know he is a liar, yes.” He was another corrupt one, who had been in prison, and who was trying to get revenge on Godbur you see. And I said, “Well I know he’s a liar, but I’m not going to be a witness.” Then the two of them are going to get off, you see. This other one got a very light sentence because he went as a witness against Godbur, you see. So I refused to go as a witness. Anyhow, Godbur went to prison.

MC: That’s very daring. I think that’s the thing -
ET: Well people said if I hadn’t been a woman and English, I’d have been killed. Fortunately I’ve been to London and made friends with some members of Parliament, and told them what was going on. And they were the opposition to the government. You know, they were the Labor Party, and the government was Conservative. So the Labor ones courted me, and I think for that reason, they were a little bit careful how they treated me.

MC: Wow, quite scary actually.
ET: It was scary. I very frequently got telephone calls. When I picked up the phone somebody [emulates heavy breathing], you know, whistled.

MC: What does that mean, like whistleblower?
ET: Sort of a threat, just to make me frightened, over and over, several times in a day. I was always careful to get a witness. So I said to Mr. Andrews, a headmaster, I said, “Would you listen to this next telephone call?” So when it came through, he listened and he heard this whistling. Otherwise they’d say I was imagining it, you see. So I rang up the head of police in Kowloon City, which was where I was living at that time, and told him about this whistling. I said, “Is there any protection for me?” And he was a man called England. I mentioned what was happening, and he said, “Madam, I think you need to see a psychologist.” I said, “Oh thank you very much. I won’t call you again.” That man later was found shot in his head though. They say he committed suicide, eventually. There was a lot of killing of police at that time. A lot of police were imprisoned for refusing to – yes [didn’t complete the sentence]. I got a letter from – they went on a fast. There must have been about nearly 20 of them, went on a fast, police and others who were in prison for reporting corruption. And they all went on a hunger strike.

MC: Did it work?
ET: Yes it worked; they all got out, because I raised it in the Urban Council in connection with hawkers, because police were taking bribes from the hawkers. Otherwise I wouldn’t be allowed to speak on that subject, because corruption was not under the jurisdiction of the Urban Council. But I brought it under hawkers you see, and said that the hawkers complained about the police and some police were in prison. And the Colonial Secretary, what was his name, Gast, Michael Gast, he got a great big article on the front page of the Sunday Morning Post, saying that I was taking advantage of my position as an urban councilor to tell stories, knowing that I couldn’t be prosecuted. That wasn’t true; we had no protection. So I wrote him answer saying, “Alright, I’m going to put it in the newspaper, so there’s nothing to stop you prosecuting me. I’m willing to go in the court. He didn’t dare to do it because he knew I was telling the truth, you see. They [corrupt officials] were right up to the top there, you know. With the exception of Murray Maclehose. And he used to call me to ask me even the small details about these things.

MC: Something like this seems like it should really be documented so that other -
ET: Well it’s in my book.

MC: Is it? Okay, that’s good.
ET: They’re all in my book, yes.

Part 2

ET: Having a vote is OK, but you want to know what kind of candidates and what of government you’ve got. The Filipinos have one-man-one-vote, and what sort of government have they got? Corrupt from top to bottom!

MC: You started off saying “Of course I believe in universal suffrage”.
ET: Of course I do, yes. But we have to be sure that people know what they’re voting for, and we have to be sure we’ve got candidates who will be not corrupt.

MC: India?
ET: India, yes.
…
MC: Maybe the voting? They have different number of electoral votes in America. But I think the question I’m trying to get at is the idea of one-man-one-vote – why I ask that is that for me it seems like – and I could be not thinking of this properly – but if somebody is very educated, is very concerned about people, who spent a lot of time trying to understand what’s happening in the world, why should that person have one vote against someone who doesn’t really give a hoot, and could actually end up selling their votes? I see that popularity contests are not a good way to judge any kind of standard.
ET: It is a beauty contest!

MC: One-man-one-vote is kind of like a popularity contest! It’s not based on any fundamental understanding of candidates -
ET: Well I think the reason why American democracy fails is because there are lots of people voting because they like a person’s face, or because he patted the baby, or because he gave us some extra money for coal in the winter -

MC: Yes exactly. You can pander to the public very easily, because if they’re not trying to inform themselves of what the issues are, then it’s very easy to -
ET: I think that’s why democracy’s gone wrong –
…
MC: The two party system in America maybe is also a thing that merits some attention, whether or not that’s a good system -
ET: The people are really not voting for candidates, they’re voting for… who was it… you know that blind lady in America, what’s her name?

MC: Blind lady?
ET: A lady who’s blind and deaf.

MC: Helen Keller.
ET: Helen Keller. Do you know what she said? “Americans have a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

MC: Yeah, and it is like that. When you have just two candidates like that, they end up just slamming each other.
ET: I don’t like party politics. People working for the party. And power. And money. It’s not democracy.
…

MC: Yes, but that’s human nature. It’s human nature to want to try to keep power when you have it. No matter what system it is -
ET: Where you want power, you haven’t got democracy. When I say one-man-one-vote, I mean I’m not against it, but there must be some sort of balance somewhere. And there isn’t a balance if all the population has a vote. I think the one we have in Hong Kong – we do have one-man-one-vote in Hong Kong you know.

MC: The District Council you mean?
ET: Well everybody has a vote in the geographical constituency, everybody. And then people in the functional constituencies all have a vote. The problem is, in my estimation, people like me have two votes. One is the geographical one, and one is the educational one. Well I don’t agree. I try to banish emotion and say it should be one-man-one-vote. One in education or geographical constituency.

MC: These votes are voting for the CE? Or are they voting for the next appointed person for that role? The next person to assume the role of district councilor or legislative councilor? Not for the chief executive.
ET: Not for the chief executive.

MC: I think the universal suffrage that everyone’s clamoring on about is that they want to vote for the chief executive.
ET: They want to get it themselves, don’t they.

MC: Yeah, and to me that’s a bit scary!
ET: There are too many parties, because they all want to be the leader, and become chief executive.
…

MC: But I think the students nowadays probably need a way to understand this weekly turmoil, these weekly protests in the street. I don’t even think the people who are marching in the street really know what they’re really marching for!
ET: They may be marching for something totally different.

MC: Yeah, for different purposes and different agendas.
ET: I remember, before they had that big half-million march on July 1, I saw an advertisement in South China Morning Post – Emily Lau. She said, “No matter who you are, or whatever your grievances, join this march.

MC: I think this piece right here about the fact that people are marching but they are marching for different things – I think it’s important for teenagers – especially the local teens who care about these issues – I think that they need to understand that this is -
ET: The newspapers made that very clear this time.

MC: That they were marching for different causes.
ET: They said it was very confusing, but we knew what they were marching for.

Part 3

MC: You’ve been living outside England since 1948.
ET: I don’t really want to go back and live there because I’ve lost contact with all my friends. In fact, most of them already passed away, because I’m 95 you know. All my school friends are gone. And I do have relatives, but I don’t see them so often. My sisters are closest. I don’t really want to go back to England, except I would like to go to England when the beautiful buds are coming out in the spring, and I could go to the countryside, and see the Dean where I used to do my studies with the water opening down, you know. Just the natural side. But otherwise, I think I don’t really want to live there because it seems to me that the British people are a little bit isolated from the world. It’s such a small country and all, they’re very much involved with their own little affairs – “Does the wallpaper match the carpet?” and that sort of thing – I couldn’t care less! But people in Hong Kong are getting like that now aren’t they. They get very stylish things now in Hong Kong.

MC: If a young person wanted to, for example, leave Hong Kong and live in another country, what would be some thoughts that you would have for them?
ET: I don’t think it’d be fair to advise anybody so they felt they had to do what I said. I would say they should be guided by their own feelings on that. If they’re happy there, if they’re doing something useful there, let them stay. But if not, if they still have a feeling they want to be back in their own country, then I would say better go back.

MC: That’s nice. The other question was… speaking to an audience of young people – 13 to 21 – what would be some words of wisdom or advice -
ET: Words of wisdom? I don’t think I’m wise enough to give words of wisdom. I would hope that they’d keep away from these very strange religions that are coming around in the world.

MC: Strange religions?
ET: All kinds of religions that are promising this or the other, filling them up with things that make them feel they’re superior, that they’re going to heaven and other people are not, you know, fundamentalism again. I think that’s a very bad influence on young people.

MC: Where could they find some guidance, or something that would help them grow as people?
ET: Well I don’t think you can guide them, except to say keep your mind open. Don’t accept anything people say unless you really feel that you can believe it, and it has some meaning in your life. Sometimes a friend will say, “Oh, joining this is great”, and you join because of a friend, and afterwards wish you hadn’t.

MC: What are some values though? I mean maybe some families or some children don’t come from necessarily environments that have a very strong sense of values or anything like that. I think sometimes maybe religion is attractive because it does give you a very concrete set of values or rules that you can follow, that make you a “good” and productive – rather than a destructive - person. … But at least the person who thinks that they don’t know how to make the decision, they can turn to something – an authority – so religion as an authority. But if you don’t take that as an authority necessarily, where might you go for that? That strength I guess.
ET: I think you can adopt the principle that you come into the world, and if you can leave the world a better place, it makes your life worth living. Try to make the world a better place, and treat other people as you would like other people to treat you. Don’t give way to prejudice, which of course sometimes we do – I do myself. But I think you need to treat people as human beings, and don’t hurt other people.

MC: What if all your life you’ve been treated very poorly, you’ve been beaten or whatever, and that’s all you know?
ET: Well, I think even then, if you’re badly treated all your life, then you can learn from that, not to treat other people in the way you were treated, to avoid what has hurt you, avoid hurting others in that way.

MC: Thank you Elsie for agreeing to take this interview, mostly the questions were prepared by a student intern, Daisy Chan who cannot be here for this interview because of a family emergency.