Roars from the past: When wild tigers roamed Hong Kong
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On a winter day in 1948, a teenage girl in a small village in Hong Kong saw a terrifying scene she would never forget. It is hard to imagine a tiger in the concrete jungle that is the city today.

But many Hongkongers, like Granny Jang, have or are familiar with stories from the past about tiger kills or sightings. Fascinated by the idea of wild tigers visiting my city, I decided to track down some people who could tell me more, like geographer Chris Goggins.

There is no reason in the world to think that tigers would not venture from Guangdong into the peninsula where the new territories are and also even swim out to Hong Kong Island and they were reported on Lantau and even Lama. This is Roars from the Past, a podcast about the South China tigers who frequented Hong Kong until the 1950s and a few thereafter.

My name is Claudia Hintersheer and I'm right now in the middle of Maoshan country park. I'm looking for an abandoned village. It must have been around here that Granny Zhang saw a tiger kill in 1948. Back then this was a village of about 25 families.

I was 15 or 16 when I heard about tigers around. People were scared that their cows, which they kept for farming, would be eaten by tigers. Tigers love to eat cows. The tiger kill Popo Cheung witnessed as a teenager was that of a wild boar. The tiger dragged the boar a long way. Villagers walked 15 minutes along the bloodied route to find the remains of the boar.

Only two of its legs had been eaten by the tiger. Much of the body was left, which was then divided by the Veli people. My mom ate some, but I did not. When asked how they knew what animal had killed and eaten the boar, she was quick to reply: Of course we knew the boar had been eaten by a tiger. If not, what would have eaten it? And she's right.

there aren't really any other predators in Hong Kong capable of taking down a big boar. This story is among 60 tiger-related anecdotes in the book The Last Tigers of Hong Kong. The book and research is by John Seiki, a Japanese British author who recently moved back to the UK. Of course, I first needed to know, for my own safety and that of the local listeners, when was the last tiger spotted in Hong Kong?

Here's how John describes the first sighting of the tiger in his book.

It started with a 19-year-old schoolgirl, So Ka Ling, a pupil of the Diocesan Girls' School, who was on an outing with friends near the Xingmun Reservoir. She said she saw an animal that was about three or four feet high, decorated with black and white stripes. On July 23rd, 1965, the South China Morning Post published a short article, Girl Says She Saw a Tiger in New Territories. It quotes the girl as saying...

I found a dog-like animal with black and white stripes squatting on its haunches in the thick undergrowth of a small path near the reservoir with its eyes half open. As soon as I spotted it, I immediately turned around and walked away slowly, offering prayers that would not spring on me. So the girl went to the Kowloon police station to report a wild beast. It's said of the first of many searches by officers and elite army unit, as well as amateur hunters.

As part of the search, goats were tied up near Gurga soldier watch posts and even three bulls were brought in. But the tiger appeared to have no appetite for the live bait. At some point, a helicopter was deployed. Besides the schoolgirl, three hunters reported seeing the tiger and two villagers saw it too. Nearly a month into the search operation, the post reported...

One party, which included a South China Morning Post reporter, was attacked by a swarm of wasps. Three of them, including the reporter, were badly stung. All three victims were given medical treatment. Shots were fired and targets missed. Whole prints were found and examined. But the elusive Shinmung tiger, the last wild tiger that reportedly visited Hong Kong, remains a mystery. They never caught it.

I'm at the Hong Kong cemetery in Happy Valley. This is section 2. In the distance we can hear the traffic, the birds. And yes, here is the tomb. It reads: "In loving memory of Ernest Goucher, a native of Nottingham, constable, Hong Kong police who, while on duty in the new territories, was mauled by a tiger and died from his wounds. Aged 21 years."

And it's nearly faded, but the bottom line says: Gone but not forgotten. So it was here that back in 1915, Gouchers' Coffin was covered with a union flag and buried in the presence of some hundred policemen. Weeks before the young officer died this painful death, residents had run into Van Link police station to report sightings of a tiger on the loose. But it was dismissed at first.

Officers had put it down to the Chinese propensity for exaggeration, according to a Post report at the time. The course of events leading up to the death of the low-ranking officer, or so-called police constable, PC in short, was reported as following:

How PC Goucher sustained the injuries which caused his death is well known. A report that a Tiger was in the neighbourhood was received, and together with PC Holland, he went to seek stripes, taking with him a shotgun whilst his companion carried an automatic pistol containing eight shots. They reached a small thicket and the Tiger rushed at them. PC Goucher fired both barrels at the brute and then fell down, the Tiger springing on his back and severely mauling him.

Gaucho died of his wounds four days later. And then a second policeman, Ruton Singh, was killed on the spot. He came up in a second party after the first attack on Gaucho. And he was really badly mauled and he died there and then. So he killed two policemen. And then a Hong Kong policeman, Donald Burlingham, shot it.

When they finally killed the tiger, a photo was taken of the catch. It shows a group portrait of British policemen and newspaper reporters facing the camera, with two local men holding a bamboo pole to which the massive Shung Shui tiger is bound by its feet, dangling upside down like a roasted pig.

And then the tiger was brought to Hong Kong Island and displayed at the town hall and hundreds of people came to see it. When the City Hall building in Central was demolished before World War II, the stuffed tiger head was relocated to the former Central Police Station on Hollywood Road, known today as Tycoon. There it hung above the entrance until it was finally moved to the Hong Kong Police Museum.

where the trophy from 1915 is still on view today. Another famous tiger incident happened in 1942, while Hong Kong was under Japanese occupation during World War II. It started with a report from prisoners of war at the Stanley Prison Camp. For a few nights, inmates had heard a terrifying sound. The prison camp did not have any windows or doors, so the tiger wars must have petrified the prisoners.

30 guards were sent to trace the big cat, which was eventually found and shot dead. There have been discussions about that in recent years on history forums that ask whether it was a wild tiger or if it was a tiger that was from a circus that had been abandoned in the invasion by Japan. But none of those stories are proven.

In fact, one of the inmates at the camp was a biology lecturer from Hong Kong University called Jeffrey Herklot. Reports from the time say he confirmed that the dead animal was indeed a wild tiger. Another internee had worked as a butcher before the war and was ordered to remove the tiger's pelt. The skin of the tiger still hangs at the Tin Hau Temple in Stanley. I came to the temple in Stanley in the south of Hong Kong Island to see the fur for myself.

Thank you. Here indeed I find the tiger pelt. And it has a note next to it. It says: "This tiger weighed 240 pounds, was 73 inches long and 3 feet high. It was shot by an Indian policeman, Mr. Roor Singh, in front of Stanley Police Station, year of 1942."

So that means it weighed more than 100 kilograms, was nearly two meters long and stood about a meter tall. The tiger pelt is totally blackened by the incense that has been burning here over the years. It looks more like the fur of a brown bear. A tiger is an extremely striking animal. The orange

base coat color broken up by these beautiful black vertical lines. An extremely muscular, powerful animal that can move extremely quickly over short distances. This is the American geographer again who studies tigers in southern China. I'm Chris Coggins. I'm a professor of geography and Asian studies. And yeah, I'm still doing field research in China and

I love it. There's a rich history of humans and tigers in southern China that goes well into the 20th century. I told Professor Coggins about the most recent Hong Kong tiger sighting, the cat who was never caught. Experts say that the sighting was extra remarkable because it took place after a Chinese campaign against tigers, which was part of Mao Zedong's economic plan, the Great Leap Forward.

This was a period of extreme ideological fervor in which nature was seen as the enemy. And, you know, there was even a...

campaign to attack the tigers, the Attack Tigers Campaign. This was part of Mao's war against nature. And it was at that time, unfortunately, believed that animals like tigers were really an impediment to social and economic development, even though that certainly was not the case.

It was catastrophic for forests and wildlife. There was the For Pests campaign at the same time against rats and sparrows and mosquitoes and flies. And, you know, millions of people were marshaled and mobilized to go and kill those animals. So it was a really devastating attack on a variety of fauna in China.

Nearly every winter, one or more tigers visit the new territories. Often the visitors are tigress with or without cubs. The visit rarely lasts more than two or three days. A tiger thinks nothing of a 40 mile walk and in a couple of nights could walk from the wild country behind Bias Bay to Tai Mo Shan or the Kowloon Hills.

Because their visits are usually of such short duration and because most people exaggerate, little credence is given to tiger rumors. There seems to be skepticism about whether tigers roamed Hong Kong. Let me clarify something. This is a perennial problem all across southern China when you're doing research on big cats. If you say...

Does this place have tigers? Were there tigers here before? People say, they're tigers, of course. But they could be talking about leopards. They could be talking about clouded leopards. They could be talking about golden cats. Okay.

So this is a big part of the problem. So some of the skepticism is warranted. And even in Fujian in the 90s, when I was doing research originally in the late and the mid to late 90s, people would clarify and they'd say, oh, Huananhu, the South China tiger. You mean that kind of tiger? Yeah.

Why, other than the two most famous tiger stories from 1915 and 1942, did the roaming big cats not make it into local history books? Why does it seem like people dismiss tigers in Hong Kong as some kind of folklore?

In his book, John describes the first post-war sighting as following: "Hong Kong had a new batch of editors who had not studied the pre-war history of the Tiger in the Territory. You can almost see an arched eyebrow as an amused hack stabbed out the letters on his typewriter, a lucky strike dangling from the corner of his mouth.

as if armed gangsters, money sharks, black marketeers and other rats, both metaphorical and literal, weren't enough. The colony of Hong Kong is now blessed with a tiger if the village folk of Chum Wan, at the foot of Taimoshan, are to be believed. There was a time not so long ago when Hong Kong's animal population was far larger and more diverse than it is today. Besides tigers, wild leopards and pangolins roamed the land.

That was John again.

The Lee Gardens he's talking about is around the corner of our office. It is now one of the world's busiest commercial hubs, but back in those days, the Lee Garden amusement park was the beginning of Causeway Bay becoming a popular destination for entertainment. Sadly, the live tiger on display soon died from its wounds and the stress of being kept in a small cage.

Let me tell you though, one thing I find fascinating is in China, the traditional lore held that in the stripes on the forehead of the tiger, one must see the Wang character, the character for king.

And if it didn't have that, some people believed that it was actually some kind of imposter, some sort of sea monster or some alien animal or spirit animal that was not actually a tiger because the tiger was the king of beasts and it should have the king character on its forehead. And that is the king of a hundred beasts, a very important, very intelligent animal that essentially was worshiped, um,

in early history, especially by indigenous people. But the Han Chinese carried on that tradition of profound respect for this animal. Despite this respect, the South China tiger has become a critically endangered species, believed to be extinct in the wild. And it has now been several decades since the king of beasts was last spotted in Hong Kong. But Professor Coggins has this perhaps scary but also hopeful parting thought.

With genetic engineering, with CRISPR and things, there may be tigers reintroduced into southern China within our lifetimes. I mean, this is not an unreasonable thing to think about. So stay tuned.

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