THE LAST TIGERS OF HONG KONG by John Saeki

I am late to the party with this book which was published in Hong Kong in 2022. I was thanked by the author for providing our recollections of what we had been told about the 1965 sightings and evidence for what was possibly or even probably the last wild tiger to be seen in Hong Kong a few months before our arrival in 1965.

John Saeki did a great job in pulling together accounts of sightings and hunting of tigers in Hong Kong during the 20th century. He did so against a background of an incredible degree of incredulity on the part of journalists for the local newspapers who never seemed to be able to get it into their heads that Hong Kong was well within the natural range of the Tiger or that villagers or expats were not all stupid in mistaking tigers for domestic tabbies. Saeki also drew on evidence from regions and provinces in south China which indicated just how common and dangerous to the human population tigers had been and how steps had been made throughout China to wipe them out, an occupation that reached its peak in the 1950s with skins sold for foreign currency and body parts for the Chinese medicine trade.

Tigers in Hong Kong killed people: two villagers in 1937 and the policemen Ernest Goucher and Rutton Singh, who had a tiger cornered, in 1915 together with two more villagers.

Reports of Hong Kong Tigers were characterised by each incident, proven or otherwise, being of a relatively short duration.from days to a couple of months. Hong Kong did not have many wild ungulates and the reports often came to light as a results of attacks on domestic cattle, water buffalo and pigs. Tigers wandering across the border from mainland China would have to work very hard to find food.

It is possible that not all reports of tigers were tigers. Large animals in which the stripes were not seen could have been leopards, particularly melanistic ones, which did visit or live in Hong Kong in the past (see HERE). 

Not only have tigers now gone from South China, were they there their chances of even reaching the Hong Kong border have now also gone. In the mid-1960s tourists and newcomers were taken to the village of Lok Ma Chau to look across the closed border area and the Shum Chun, Sham Chung or Shenzhen River into China. There were fields, more fields, a small town and hills in the distance. Across that whole area is now the city of Shenzhen with more than 17.3 million people.

Coincidentally, there was a report from Lok Ma Chau of a tiger being seen at Lok Ma Chau in September 1976. The report said it was about three feet high, four feet long and dark; it had been seen ‘twice in ten days, roaming about after dark’. The old questions loom: was that a Tiger, a Leopard, a much smaller Leopard Cat or large domestic cat looking bigger in the dark? 

1966. The view from Lok Ma Chau into China. The river is the border 

2023. The view from the mouth of the river across the border with the city of Shenzhen behind

Saeki J. 2022. The Last Tigers of Hong Kong.Hong Kong: Blacksmith Books. Available on Amazon