Hong Kong Golf in the 1960s - Part Two

One day, the Secretary was making a course inspection when he was accosted by a homely little chap. They passed the time of day, and the visitor said: ‘Nice course you have here. My name’s Joe Kraft and I’m from Chicago. I make cheese.’
Everyone who is anyone tries to take a peep at Shek O. Many of the twenty-one villas looking down on the valley are owned by the large Hong Kong companies and are used by their executives for entertaining. Jardine Matheson’s have the one with the St Andrews flag, and a United States businessman has the ‘Hanging Gardens of Babylon’ that rises as a background to the 15th green.
Also, we met a very remarkable club servant.
Mr Lau Kang Poo has been the Chief Steward at Shek O for more than a quarter of a century. But he is much much more. As Headman, or elder, of Shek O village he is a man of considerable importance. The village is a collection of houses on the promontory that juts out to sea. All the club staff come from there and Mr Lau engages them (indoor and outdoor), determines salaries, and takes any disciplinary action necessary. He has about a hundred people in his charge.
In a small basement room, an abacus on his table, he is clearly a man of substance. His son, like most of the young men from the village, is a steward on an ocean-going liner. But the girls in the village work as caddies and for them this is considered a high honour, quite unlike the state of affairs in the villages near Fanling, where the elders said to club officials: ‘You have perverted our sons. You shall not have our daughters’
The little girl caddies at Shek O are worth coming miles to see. Three of them were recently upgraded to ‘special club assistants’. They are Kitty, Nancy and Julie (she wanted that name after Julie Andrews) and wear snappy tight blue pants, blue sleeveless tunics with brass buttons, white silk shirts with ritzy cuff-links, and pale blue bandeaux in their hair. Kitty conducts the charming ‘Half Way House’ by the 10th tee. Coloured tiles, geraniums, a miniature Chinese bridge… Most attractive, like a chip from a willow-pattern plate - where you can get drinks.