21/09/2026
This guest blog for the Historical Photographs of Hong Kong platform comes from Dr Catherine S. Chan, Assistant Professor and a social and urban historian of East and Southeast Asia at Lingnan University. Her latest book, Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong, explores the dark side of colonial modernity through canine experiences.
https://hphk.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2026/09/15/guest-blog-hong-kongs-animal-outliers-chinese-wonks-in-a-british-colonial-city/
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In an 1803 essay, an American natural historian and race theorist sketched Indian dogs in the likes of their ‘inferior’ Native American owners as imagined by American imperialists. He wrote: ‘The Indian dog […] is frequently called, by the traders and others, the half-wolf breed […] they have less fidelity; for, though never so well fed, they will steal from their masters […] everything shows that the Indian dog is a much more savage or imperfectly reclaimed animal than the common dog. [1]
In colonial Asia, the interweaving of native dogs with ‘white’ societal constructions of ‘race’ and ‘class’ was inseparable from two developments: rabies and the introduction of Victorian dog fancy. Rabies legislation resulted in the mass destruction of canine lives, particularly those of native ‘mongrels’ deemed ‘undesirable;’ dog fancy, seen in the copious number of old photographs featuring pure-bred dogs and non-locals in port-cities, served as a middle-class fe**sh for foreigners and well-to-do Eurasians and locals.
Dwarfed by these events, the Filipino askal (short for asong kalye or street dog), the pariah dog of Thailand, and the Singaporean strays (today, the ‘Singapore Special’)—all Asian equivalents to the ‘Indian dog’—were placed at the core of emerging social constructions of natives as less ‘pure’ and less civilised. Hong Kong’s very own is known as tong gau (唐狗), ‘mongrel’ dogs native to southern China sometimes called the Chinese ‘wonk.’ Many were useful hunting dogs and guard dogs for Chinese households but most roamed in the fringes of colonial society as ‘outliers.’ In Hong Kong’s twentieth-century journey to modernisation, these dogs were primary targets of culling campaigns and public criticism.
Throughout the first few decades of the twentieth-century, Hong Kong did not experience massive rabies outbreaks like Singapore, yet the British colonial government imposed restrictive measures that curtailed canine rights to tread freely across the city. Movement between the Islands and Kowloon was disallowed, and unmuzzled, collarless, and unleashed dogs—automatically assumed to be strays—were indiscriminately shot on the spot. Pedigree dogs were, thus, not spared: amongst many others, a shaggy-haired terrier had its paw shattered by a bullet and a chow dog dropped dead moments after leaving its house beyond the official shooting hours.[2]
The seasonal dog-sweeping campaigns turned into a multi-layered racial issue: while residents generally supported the shooting of the Chinese ‘wonks,’ they complained about the wrongful killing of ‘thoroughbreds who were ‘owned by British residents, who pay taxes for them’ and were ‘carefully muzzled, and sleeping quietly at their gates.’[3] Inside Hong Kong’s courts, noises were heard about the injustice towards European-owned dogs. As Europeans found with unmuzzled dogs were usually fined a few dollars more than the financially-struggling Chinese, grievances surfaced about why the ‘better’ dogs of the Europeans should suffer in the place of the ‘wonks’ from Chinese households.[4]
The introduction of dog shows in 1914 would further complicate the lives of mixed-bred canines. In responding to calls for the colony to hold its own dog show, the Governor—despite being a cat-lover—supported the initiative in hopes that it would diversify the breeds of canines in the city and reduce the mongrel population.[5] He had a point: in 1924, a ‘Noah’s Ark’ led by an English businessman sailed into Hong Kong with Airedales, bulldogs, terriers, collies, greyhounds, pointers, retrievers, spaniels, and other dogs to meet the increasing demand for pedigree dogs.[6] A few years later, the owner of a Connecticut kennel arrived to promote dachshunds. Not mentioning their talkativeness, he advised dog lovers to ‘invest’ in the short-legged German hound because they were small enough and were intelligent, strong, and so clean they would not leave behind any ‘doggy smell’ in the city’s humidity.[7]
The establishment of a Kennel Club in Hong Kong in 1947 deepened the mongrel-pedigree divide. Addressing the decision to organise a dog show despite a rabies panic in the Chinese mainland, the Club’s Honorary Secretary, H.M. Howell, pledged to protect the colony’s ‘better [canine] class’ by barring stray dogs within the precincts of the show.[8] Howell would later write in a 1966 newspaper column that although ‘any dog is better than no dog,’ one who has money to spend should ‘patronise breed.’[9]
The perception of pedigrees as the city’s ‘good dogs’ became deeply etched in the minds of Hong Kong citizens, including mongrel owners. In 1972, an old half-blind, half-bald dog named Jannie had to be let go. The government offered her family a resettlement estate flat—where Jannie would not be allowed—because one of the walls of their home was in danger of collapsing. Asked by a journalist about Jannie’s future, her Chinese owner expressed the difficulties of rehoming her: ‘I know her and I love her, but who else is going to give a home to an old mongrel? […] Jannie is old and ugly. Nobody would want her. Except me.’[10]
I end this sombre post with Jannie’s sad story. Let’s hope she was given a chance to live and was able to have her ‘favourite chocolates’ until her last day on Earth.
Catherine S. Chan
Profile: https://scholars.ln.edu.hk/en/persons/catherine-see-chan/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/animalhistoryasia/
[1] Benjamin Smith Barton, ‘Indian Dogs,’ The Philosophical Magazine 15 (1803), 6-7.
[2] Li Chor-Chi, ‘Shooting of Dogs,’ SCMP, 7 November 1928, 11; H. J. Hunter, ‘Shooting of Dogs,’ SCMP, 11 May 1933, 9.
[3] Justice, ‘Slaughter of Dogs,’ SCMP, 1 July 1945, 6.
[4] Querist, ‘The Muzzling Order,’ SCMP, 4 September 1915, 6; ‘The Dog Order: No General Permissions,’ SCMP, 26 May 1920, 3.
[5] ‘The “Telegraph” Dog Show,’ The Hongkong Telegraph, 22 November 1912, 4.
[6] ‘For Sale,’ SCMP, 19 December 1924, 4.
[7] ‘A Dog for Hongkong: Canine Enthusiast Aboard Visiting Cruise Liner,’ SCMP, 25 March 1935, 10.
[8] H.M. Howell, ‘Kennel Club Explains,’ SCMP, 10.
[9] H.M. Howell, ‘Dogs,’ SCMP, 3 July 1966, 10.
[10] Florence Chono, ‘Old Jannie Just Won’t Understand,’ SCMP, 1 June 1972, 1.
