The Foreign Correspondents' Club Hong Kong

Clare Hollingworth remembered in FCC celebration of her life

Hong Kong’s British Consul General Andrew Heyn paid tribute to Clare Hollingworth. Photo: Sarah Graham

Glasses were raised, tears were shed and stories told as relatives, friends and colleagues of Clare Hollingworth gathered to celebrate her life at the FCC on January 19.

Club president Tara Joseph kicked off proceedings with a warm tribute to Clare, who died on January 10 at the age of 105, and asked what she would have made of the new era of media – ‘would she approve of people retweeting tweets from presidential candidates?’.

She added: “She led a very full life… This was the woman who had the scoop of the century reporting the start of World war Two as she saw tanks and troops lined up at the Polish border.

“She went on to produce many scoops in her lifetime as a journalist.

“Another important thing for many of us is that Clare also broke barriers. She was the epitome of the swashbuckling correspondent – but that was only a few decades after two decades after women in Britain secured the vote.”

Hong Kong’s British Consul General Andrew Heyn said the Foreign Office had not always been very keen on what Clare was reporting. But he added that Clare had integrity and was an example to journalists today: “She is a role model for the younger generation, a role model for women, and also as a fierce defender of the truth.”

Clare had been a member of the FCC for more than 35 years.

Clare’s great nephew told the gathered audience how, as a correspondent, her scoop on the outbreak of World War Two had often overshadowed other achievements in her life – most notably the fact that she helped Jewish refugees flee Germany, saving many lives.

Her good friend Cathy also paid tribute to the courageous correspondent, revealing how she kept on top of news events in later years despite the fact that her eyesight and hearing was failing. And her long-time carer Susan Helen fought back tears as she recalled Clare’s kindness and quick wit.

She said: “She was very fond of singing… Every day, every hour… every minute we will sing this ‘Rule Britannia Britannia rules the world!“

Tributes were read out from dignitaries and journalists around the world, including last Hong Kong governor Chris Patten; and former Telegraph editor Max Hastings; and Stephen Robinson, who led the Telegraph’s foreign desk between 1997 and 2001.

China is on the rise – but could it be a 21st Century empire?

Author and journalist Toh Han Shih talked about whether China can be an empire in the 21st Century

China’s rise as a world leader in the 21st Century has mirrored that of the British imperialists in the 19th Century – but whether it can become an empire itself is still open to question, according to the author of a book on the subject.

Writer and journalist Toh Han Shih, guest speaker at the January 16 club lunch, drew comparisons with Britain as he posed the question of whether China, through its large and growing investment and trade with the rest of the world, can emerge as an empire in the 21st Century.

With industrialisation at its core, the former SCMP journalist said China’s march toward domination of the infrastructures of some of the world’s richest – and poorest – countries was unquestionable, but conceded that it could only take America’s position as superpower after the U.S. itself redraws the framework.

Quoting from his book, Is China An Empire?, Toh Han Shih mapped the way in which China had poured billions of dollars into overseas investments by building railways, buying up property, the high spending of its wealthy tourists, investment in financial institutions, and the placing of its companies at the centre of the world’s leading industries. It has now overtaken the U.S. as the biggest buyer of assets in the world.

Author, journalist @tohhanshih: Many similarities between China in 20th Century and Britain in 19th Century #trade pic.twitter.com/UsTU3jAYxB

— FCC, Hong Kong (@fcchk) January 16, 2017

“Chinese companies are well-placed to invest in the U.S. infrastructure,” he said, referring to president-elect Donald Trump’s recent announcement that he would inject $1 trillion into the country’s infrastructure over a 10-year period.

China denies it intends to become an empire, and according to Toh Han Shih, although there is no cohesive policy behind its rise, its ‘ultimate ulterior motive is to keep the 1 billion Chinese people stable’. Yet it pledges to stand at the forefront of the so-called fourth industrial revolution, he said, which would benefit everyone in the country, down to farmers in rural China.

He pointed out that the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) – the Chinese-led global financial institution of which 100 countries are now members – had attracted the United Kingdom as one of its first members, a feat that had left the U.S. appearing weak.

Toh Han Shih also drew parallels with Vladimir Lenin’s 1916 book, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Lenin summised that new imperialism was an economic phenomenon and to define it one needed to accept five essential features including monopolisation, the merging of banking and industry, and the export of capital. Toh Han Shih said China was already meeting the criteria.

TOLO News wins AFP Kate Webb Prize for courageous reporting in Afghanistan

Lotfullah Najafizada, news director of Afghanistan’s TOLOnews, receives the Kate Webb award from AFP Asia-Pacific director Philippe Massonnet at the FCC Hong Kong, Thursday, Jan 12,2017. Kate’s brother and sister, Jeremy Webb and Rachel Miller, are also pictured. Photo: Terry Duckham/Asiapix

TOLO News, a privately run Afghan TV news station owned by MOBY Group, has won the 2016 Agence France-Presse (AFP) Kate Webb Prize for its reporting in one of the world’s most dangerous countries. 21st Century Fox invested in MOBY Group in 2012 and currently has a 48 percent ownership stake in the intrepid media company.

The Kate Webb Prize, administered by the AFP Foundation, honours journalists working in unsafe conditions in Asia and promotes press freedom through journalist training in developing countries. The prize is named after New Zealand-born Kate Webb, a fearless AFP reporter who worked across the continent and became a mentor for younger Asian journalists. She died in 2007, and the first Kate Webb Prize was awarded in 2008.

“We are recognising TOLO News for its courageous work telling the stories of the people of Afghanistan, a place that is becoming ever more hostile for the media,” said Philippe Massonnet, AFP’s regional director for the Asia-Pacific region and jury chairman. “By awarding the prize to TOLO as an organisation, we are also recognising the extraordinary work carried out by all Afghan journalists in ever-deteriorating conditions.”

Lotfullah Najafizada, director of TOLO News, called the prize a great honour. “The late Kate Webb was an inspiration to dozens of our journalists, who like Kate, have earned a reputation for being fearless in the face of adversity.”

MOBY Group launched in 2003 with one FM radio station and has since grown into Afghanistan’s leading suite of television, radio and online platforms. In addition to providing the Afghan people channels to previously inaccessible information, MOBY has put women front and center in its storytelling, a decision that runs counter to the past laws of the country forbidding women on television. It has also challenged perspectives in the country with a reality series on transgender youth in a Muslim culture.

The company’s bold decisions have come with a hefty price: MOBY’s television stations were named as “military objectives” by the Taliban, and seven of TOLO News’ employees were killed in a targeted Taliban suicide bombing in January 2016.

Saad Mohseni, Chairman and CEO of MOBY Group, praised Lotfullah and the TOLO News team on their prize: “Their dedication to free and independent reporting has contributed to building a freer, more tolerant and democratic Afghanistan.”

Obituary: The legendary Clare Hollingworth, 1911-2017

Clare as a freelancer in the 1950s.

The FCC’s legendary Correspondent member, Clare Hollingworth, who spent her entire working life travelling the world reporting war and conflict, passed away at home in Hong Kong in January at the very venerable of age 105.

Hollingworth, often hailed as the “doyenne of Foreign Correspondents”, forged a remarkable career as a foreign correspondent, beginning with the scoop of the century when she reported the start of World War II from Poland in September 1939 while working as a stringer for London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper.

She was a dedicated journalist who overcame gender barriers to report from the front lines of major conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Vietnam. She lived her final four decades in Hong Kong after being one of the few Western journalists to report on the Cultural Revolution from China in the 1970s.

Hollingworth had celebrated her 105th birthday in October last year at the FCC. “We are very sad to hear about Clare’s passing. She was a tremendous inspiration to us all and a treasured member of our club. We were so pleased that we could celebrate her 105th birthday with her this past year,” FCC president Tara Joseph said.

Best known as a Daily Telegraph correspondent, Hollingworth wrote for many publications during her long career, including The Economist, The Observer, Manchester Guardian, Daily Express, International Herald Tribune and Asian Wall Street Journal.

Charles Moore, the editor of the Daily Telegraph described Clare as one the Telegraph’s most distinguished servants and an inspiration to all foreign correspondents and all women in journalism. Other tributes from the Telegraph included:

Clare in the 1960s next to a RAF Hunter in Aden

Kate Adie, the veteran BBC war correspondent said Hollingworth was “a pioneer” for women in journalism who did not stop after her great scoop, went on to have a “a lifetime of journalism, full of adventure, good stories and terrific attention to detail and fact. She was a role model, without being aware of it.

Robert Fox, the Telegraph‘s former defence and chief foreign correspondent, described Hollingworth as amazing and steadfast. “After the Falklands I remember she took me to lunch and asked me about the state of the British Army. She used to take the trouble to come over to me, she was always interested and took a great deal of interest in younger reporters.”

The BBC’s John Simpson, who first met Clare in 1978, described her as a journalist who people trusted. “She interviewed the Shah of Iran in 1941, just after we had put him on the throne, and she was the only person he would speak to before he died – because he trusted her. I consider her one the finest journalists of the 20th Century, along with Martha Gellhorn and one or two others. I shall miss her memory more than I can say.”

Chris Patten, who knew Hollingworth when he was Hong Kong governor, said, “Clare was quite literally one of the greatest journalists of the 20^th century. She was a great buccaneer, brave, witty and wise. “She covered some of the greatest stories of the last century with imitable dash and, on top of all that, she was kind and lovable.”

Clare with the Commander of British Forces near Tamar in Hong Kong.

Patrick Garrett, her biographer and great-nephew, said, “At 105 we had begun to wonder if Clare was one of the immortals. However, she got a cold around Christmas and obviously it is an extra concern with the elderly. We assumed she’d fight it off but it was to be her last Christmas.

“She was far from home but she’d been abroad most of her life. Seventy-eight years ago in Nazi Austria and most years since on foreign soil.”

Garrett, in his biography of Hollingworth, “Of fortune and war” published in July last year, described her first taste of war: “27-year-old Clare collared one of the scoops of the century by borrowing the flagged diplomatic car of the British consul-general in Katowice (with whom she’d a fling, extra-marital for both of them) on the Polish-German border, driving probably in breach of the rules into Germany and by chance seeing masses of Wehrmacht tanks readying for action. When a couple of days later the tanks rolled into Poland, Clare’s first account of world war breaking out was denied – by a disbelieving Polish government.”

What is far less well known is what Hollingworth was doing immediately before she walked into the offices of the Daily Telegraph in Fleet Street in August 1939 and asked for, and got, a job. “The fact is during the spring and summer that year Clare played an important part in rescuing around three thousand people from under the very noses of the Nazis.” These were refugees facing immediate arrest, or worse, as the Nazis tightened their grip on eastern Europe. Clare’s job was to try to help these very frightened people who were on the Nazis’ wanted list to find a safe haven. This she did despite nightmarish logistical difficulties, lack of funds and baulky bureaucracies. It is an amazing account of sheer, bloody-minded persistence on Hollingworth’s part – qualities that would serve her splendidly in her journalism. It was clearly “fiendishly difficult and dangerous work that deserved gratitude and recognition far beyond the modest OBE she received from the British government much later in life.”

Clare during the India-Pakistan war in circa 1965, also with The Guardian

After her journalistic coup on the Polish-German border, Clare had hair’s-breadth escapes from the rapidly advancing German forces, experiences which did nothing to quench her thirst for action and adventure. Far from it. And the outbreak of World War II was by no means her only scoop. Another notable success was breaking the story of double agent Kim Philby’s defection to Moscow.

Throughout her subsequent career she repeatedly impressed or shamed her male correspondent peers with her sang-froid and apparent fearlessness. “It was manic story-chasing and a perverse pleasure in warfare. This relentless hunt for conflict and adventure would become a way of life for Clare, and ultimately it is what defined her as a person.”

Hollingworth was born October 10, 1911, to a middle-class family in the village of Knighton in Leicestershire, England. Her father ran a boot factory founded by her grandfather. She took brief courses in Croatian at Zagreb University, international relations in Switzerland and Slavonic studies in London. She worked as a secretary and then at a British refugee charity in Poland while writing occasional articles about the looming war in Europe, before landing the job with the Daily Telegraph that was to launch her remarkable career.

When Clare moved to Hong Kong in 1981 it was supposed to be temporary. She was researching a book on The Great Helmsman (Mao and the Men Against Him) and had secured a research position at HKU’s Centre of Asian Studies. She never planned to stay, but was intrigued by the negotiations over Hong Kong’s future. Finally she decided to sit it out until the Handover. She never left.

Undoubtedly one reason she opted for Hong Kong was the FCC. Describing the Club as a “second home” for some members may be an old cliché. But for Clare it soon became her first home. Widowed in 1965 she lived for journalism, and was frankly obsessed with following “the story”. She lived modestly – university accommodation at first, later an un-renovated one-room flat. But in the FCC Main Bar there was always someone – local insiders, out-of-towners, and reporters from the 20th century’s wars – to exchange gossip and memories.

A one minute silence was observed in the Main Bar and a service to celebrate Clare’s life will held in the Club on Thursday, January 19. Tributes to Clare and her achievements can be found on the FCC website at http://www.fcchk.org

Celebrate Clare Hollingworth Facebook page

Patrick Garret, Anna Fenton, Jonathan Sharp, Paul Bayfield

Clare Hollingworth: a life in pictures

Legendary reporter and much beloved FCC member Clare Hollingworth has died at age 105.

Clare had a remarkable career as a foreign correspondent, beginning with the scoop of the century when she reported the start of World War II.

Photos: The FCC celebrates the New Year

Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir kicks off Christmas in Main Bar

The Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir returned for its annual Christmas visit to the FCC singing a mix of carols old and new and with many opportunities for the thirsty audience gathered in the Main Bar to join in.

Among the choir’s pieces were the Welsh carol Deck the Hall, the choir’s own FCC-themed version of White Christmas, and a swinging jazz version of Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.

For its part, the audience, with the aid of specially designed FCC song sheets, joined in with rousing renditions of The First Noel, Hark the Herald Angels Sing and O Come, All Ye Faithful. The choir finished its set with We Wish You a Merry Christmas and, after a brief encore, retired to enjoy some much deserved figgy pudding.

Waiting for the big story: AFP opens new bureau in North Korea

The AFP team check out the work of local artists in a Pyongyang park. Photo: AFP

Agence France-Presse’s new bureau in Pyongyang, which opened in September, is already churning out the stories.

The bureau, which was officially opened by Emmanuel Hoog, the group’s chief executive and chairman, so far has been focusing on producing video and photographic content.

It was able to open following an agreement made earlier in the year between AFP and the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), following “about 10 rounds of negotiations that began in 2012”, said Philippe Massonnet, AFP’s Asia-Pacific regional director.

“Not that there was any resistance by the authorities, but it was only a matter of time as we were not only dealing with KCNA, but other government departments as well.”

The Pyongyang bureau will be staffed by a locally hired videographer and a photographer, who will work in conjunction with visiting foreign correspondents, which mirrors other international news bureaux, including the Associated Press, Xinhua, Ria Novosti and Japan’s Kyodo News. AP opened the first foreign bureau in 2012.

Hughes MD-500 helicopters perform a fly-by during the first Wonsan Friendship Air Festival in Wonsan on September 24, 2016. AFP PHOTO / Ed Jones

As a big international news agency “we have to be wherever we can”, Massonnet said. “For us, it is normal and natural to open an office in North Korea, as we open offices everywhere in the world – in some we cannot employ locals, in others it’s foreigners.”

With North Korea’s total media censorship and control it must be a struggle for the locally hired staff to function properly for foreign media – even with training. “We brought the North Korean staff to Hong Kong in August for training sessions about how AFP works as well as going on shoots to take care of the practical aspects,” Massonnet said. “The two were competent and open and enthusiastic about the training and even though they were accompanied by an KCNA official the training was unsupervised.

“We had worked with the same official before during the negotiations and got on well, so we took the opportunity to show him how we deal with photo and video stories from other countries – which he found interesting even though he acknowledged that many of those types of stories would not be done by KCNA.”

AFP’s Seoul bureau chief will run the bureau while teams from South Korea, Hong Kong or China will be sent every two months or so as part of the deal. “So far, we sent a team in July, again in September and another is planned for November,” he said. “There are no visa problems and now the visas are issued in Hong Kong rather than having to go via Beijing.”

In this picture taken on September 29, 2016 commuters wait for a bus during the morning rush hour in Pyongyang. / AFP PHOTO / Ed Jones

“The November mission we will try to get, among others, the August flood aftermath story, but it is difficult – or at least time consuming – to get approval.

“Typically, we submit a list of say 20 potential stories in the hope of getting five or six to run with.”

So far the Pyongyang team has been involved in stock footage shoots of the capital as well as getting on the streets and train stations and the like; or reacting when someone noteworthy visits Pyongyang. “We did cover the 15th Pyongyang International Film festival [brainchild of the cinema-obsessed “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-ll] in September.

“It’s really a way of showing as much as we can about what’s happening in Pyongyang. Many of our clients – particularly in South Korea and Japan – want as many images as they can get from the country.”

One of the ways the AFP team gets around in North Korea is to work with NGOs, “often going to places that are normally difficult for journalists to get to”. A case in point is that they were able to cover the floods in North Hamgyong province, where some 140 people were killed and 35,000 homes destroyed, by being part of an NGO team. “It enabled us to get some great footage,” he said.

Everything produced by AFP in North Korea will be edited by AFP people, mainly at the regional headquarters in Hong Kong. “There is no difference from anywhere else in the region where we have people taking photos or videos or writing stories. They send their material to Hong Kong, and it will be exactly the same for North Korean stories.”

Portraits of former North Korean leaders Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il are displayed on buildings of the Pyongyang skyline on July 27, 2013. North Korea mounted its largest ever military parade to mark the 60th anniversary of the armistice that ended fighting in the Korean War, displaying its long-range missiles at a ceremony presided over by leader Kim Jong-Un. AFP PHOTO / Ed Jones / AFP PHOTO / Ed Jones

Portraits of former North Korean leaders Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il are displayed on buildings of the Pyongyang skyline on July 27, 2013. AFP PHOTO / Ed Jones / AFP PHOTO / Ed Jones

As in other countries where AFP operates there is official monitoring. “But monitoring is not a problem. It would be a problem if we were censored. The big issue for us is to go there and to report or shoot what we see… and this job won’t be much different than the one we do in other countries where it is difficult to work.”

Once a story is finished and on the “wires” that might be another story. “So far we have had no negative feedback from government officials,” Massonnet said. “We will see where the limits are of what is possible to do and what is not. If we think it is worth doing and reporting about, then we will do it. It may be difficult sometimes, but that doesn’t prevent us from working and getting good material.”

Apart from a few big occasions such as mass rallies and big celebrations, foreign media don’t report from North Korea very often. “So we have a very rare opportunity to be there every month and to deliver content to our Asian clients who have big expectations about our North Korea coverage.”

Massonnet likened the Pyongyang experience with Beijing in the 70s and 80s when correspondents had no official contacts or news sources and had to rely on what they saw in the streets as reporting beyond the city was all but impossible. However, when the big story came – China opening up – the resident bureaux could move fast.

AFP’s Pyongyang-based crew on the job. Photo: AFP

“It makes sense to be in Pyongyang, not only because we don’t have much competition from the few journalists who go there, but also there are some opportunities to make connections so that you are ready when the big story breaks,” he said.

Massonnet said that even today in China, how many sources are there within the Chinese Communist Party to cover real political stories? You are left with the economic stories and speculation.

“The opening of an AFP bureau in Pyongyang will further strengthen the agency’s international network,” said the AFP chief executive, Emmanuel Hoog at the opening ceremony. “AFP’s role is to be present everywhere in the world in order to fulfil its news mission as completely as possible, in particular through images.”

AFP – which is a public company but governed by a board of representatives from French news organisations and the government – has 200 bureaux across 150 countries.

Pro-democracy election success ‘a result of Beijing’s interpretation of Hong Kong Basic Law’

Dennis Kwok and Ronny Tong talked about the reverberations of Beijing’s interpretation of the Basic Law at the FCC

The record number of seats won by pro-democracy candidates in elections to select the committee that will choose Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive is one of the implications of Beijing’s recent controversial interpretation of the Basic Law, according to barrister and Legco member Dennis Kwok.

On the day after Hong Kong voters went to the polls, Kwok told a packed FCC club lunch that Beijing’s interference after two pro-independence candidates refused to swear allegiance to China following their election to the Legislative Council was an overt political move and warned the next battleground in this ‘far from over’ saga would be about whether others have breached their oaths.

Kwok joined former chairman of the HK Bar Association and Legco member Ronny Tong to discuss the reverberations of Beijing’s interpretation of the Basic Law – Hong Kong’s mini-constitution – at the club lunch on December 12. Tong kicked off the talk by outlining how Beijing’s interpretation merely reinforced what was already written in local law about what an oath meant and how anyone who makes a false oath or acts in breach of it should be dealt with.

However, he added that what the rare interpretation did “was reinforce the perception that Beijing is not trustworthy of our judicial system or the integrity of our judges”.

Kwok, who organised a protest of more than a thousand lawyers after Beijing stepped in following the oath controversy in October, criticised pro-independence ‘Youngspiration’ candidates Sixtus “Baggio” Leung Chung-hang and Yau Wai-ching for their ‘irresponsible and childish’ actions when, during their oath-taking ceremony, they refused to swear allegiance to China, used bad language and sported banners that read “Hong Kong is Not China”. They were later disqualified from taking office.

Kwok added that Beijing’s actions had divided a society “that’s already polarised”.

Next battleground in oath-taking saga will be whether you have breached your oath, warns Dennis Kwok pic.twitter.com/CjDBM0ZlOw

— FCC, Hong Kong (@fcchk) December 12, 2016

Both Kwok and Tong agreed that the pair’s behaviour had presented an opportunity for Beijing to step in and flex its political muscles, with Tong adding that he thought the Chinese government had been genuinely afraid that its Hong Kong counterpart would lose a court case requested by Chief Executive CY Leung in which he directed judges to disqualify them.

Dennis Kwok talks about Beijing’s recent interpretation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law at the FCC

The club lunch talk, entitled The Implications of Beijing’s Recent Interpretation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, came just days after Leung announced he would not stand for a second term as Chief Executive. In a Q&A after the talk, Tong and Kwok were asked their thoughts on this latest development.

“I was flabbergasted,” said Tong: “I thought it’s just too good to be true.”

Kwok added: “I was happy for about five minutes, then I thought about all the other candidates who would come out.”

At Last… Bert’s, Hong Kong’s best jazz club, is back in business after refurbishment

The Red Stripes performing at Bert’s. Photo: Wyng Chow

Recarpeted, repainted, and for better or worse now adorned with video screens, Hong Kong’s best jazz club is back in business.

There’s nothing like having something unavailable for a while to help you appreciate it properly, and the excellence of the live music in Bert’s is something, perhaps, we sometimes take for granted.

Allen Youngblood, who originally came to Asia in the early 1990s with a band playing at the Grand Hyatt’s now defunct JJ’s nightclub, has been the FCC’s music director since before Bert’s opened. As well as performing there himself, he is responsible for booking everybody else who does.

“My idea was to call it “Round Midnight”, to single it out as a jazz club within a club, but then the suggestion was made to name it after Bert Okuley, and once I knew who he was, that seemed fine. We use the best people in town we can get, and we try to catch the best people coming through town, whatever they play. Sometimes it’s jazz, sometimes it’s R & B and soul. It depends what’s available,” he says.

Bert Okuley was a talented jazz pianist, as well as a distinguished foreign correspondent and former club president, and from the outset the bar named for him has had a jazz and blues theme, fully reflected in its decor.

Like most jazz-oriented venues worldwide, though, Bert’s also accommodates other styles, and although Youngblood and his trio Jazbalaya are comfortably settled back in residence, he chose performers from different genres for some of the reopening gigs.

“Bert’s reopened officially on October 22 with the band Red Stripes, which plays ska,” says Youngblood, “but it actually opened before that. We had a little Oktoberfest thing with an accordion. Full dress.”

In addition to the Tuesday, Thursday and Friday live band performances, Bert’s has developed into a special events venue on otherwise generally quiet Saturday nights, and Youngblood plans to build on that.

“Saturday is a day for special functions, once a month when possible. You have to give people a reason to come back into town” says Youngblood. “Usually they sell out.”

Quite often those evenings are sufficiently popular that Bert’s cannot accommodate the numbers, and the bigger draws migrate upstairs to the Main Dining Room – as was the case in November with British Jazz Singer Ian Shaw, who played the club on November 5.

He was accompanied by Youngblood and bassist Scott Dodd, who then joined him on a tour of China, including gigs at the new Blue Note Club in Beijing and the newly relocated JZ Club in Shanghai.

Shaw, a two-time winner for Best Vocalist in the BBC Jazz Awards, is a good example of the Club getting the best, and for visiting jazz musicians Bert’s is what has put it on the map.

Over the years many notable names have dropped in to play, including, since the reopening, former James Brown drummer, Erik Hargrove. “A really musical drummer – just passing through,” says Youngblood.

The Club is also a favourite gig for such high-profile permanently locally based artists as guitarist Eugene Pao, singer, bassist, bandleader and FCC member Elaine Liu, and blues harmonica virtuoso Henry Chung, for whose appearances Bert’s transforms into a juke joint. In the past six months all have sold out either Bert’s or the Main Dining Room.

Performers who have appeared at Bert’s in recent weeks include the Orlando Bonzi band, the Jason Cheng Trio, Skip Moy and his band, and vocalists Jennifer Palor and Miriam Ma – not forgetting the performers who unobtrusively do so much to create the early evening atmosphere including singer and guitarist Mary Jane, guitarist Moy who also performs solo, and pianist Sizwe Peter among others.

The common factor? Not so much jazz as quality, says Youngblood.

“It’s a music room. We try to make it not just jazz, but that said there aren’t that many groups doing other stuff that I’d hire. It’s not what I think about their music. It’s a question of what’s available that’s good.

“Nothing against places like The Wanch, where you get people who can play and people who can’t play, but that’s not what we are. We want people who are seasoned. Don’t be down here practicing.”

New kitchen, full menu

While Bert’s was closed for music during August and September it still operated as a temporary kitchen and food storage while the FCC’s main kitchen, buried deep in the bowels of the building, underwent a HK$6 million refìt.

All major fittings and appliances were ripped out and replaced with modern equipment without needing to redesign the space. The kitchen is now a fully modern working environment allowing the CIub far more flexibility to add new styles of cuisine.

Since October 11, when it was also free bubbly time to launch the renovated Bert’s, a full menu has been in operation under Chef George and his team.