Governor Rowbotham expresses surprise at Fogg's accommodation in Hong Kong's Taipingshan district and draws a parallel to Bethnal Green. Like the area of London to which Rowbotham compared it, Taipingshan was known for its poor living conditions and high population.
The district was to be found in the present-day location of Tai Ping Shan Street on the northern slopes of Victoria Peak in Sheung Wan. By the 1860s, it was described as being largely populated by brothels, gambling halls and opium dens.
Taipingshan would later become ground zero for the 1894 Hong Kong plague, an early component of a global bubonic plague pandemic. First identified in China in the 1880s, the plague spread via Hong Kong to much of the world and related outbreaks continued for decades afterwards.
The district was to be found in the present-day location of Tai Ping Shan Street on the northern slopes of Victoria Peak in Sheung Wan. By the 1860s, it was described as being largely populated by brothels, gambling halls and opium dens.
Taipingshan would later become ground zero for the 1894 Hong Kong plague, an early component of a global bubonic plague pandemic. First identified in China in the 1880s, the plague spread via Hong Kong to much of the world and related outbreaks continued for decades afterwards.
Governor Rowbotham bores Fogg with a description of the Dove, a Hammersmith pub near the Thames where the "chap who wrote Rule Britannia!" used to drink. A Grade II-listed public house located at 19 Upper Mall, Hammersmith, the Dove dates to the early 18th century, and poet James Thomson is indeed believed to have written the lyrics there at the age of 40.
On arriving in Hong Kong in mid-November 1872, Fogg's entourage meets a fictional Hong Kong governor and his wife, Sir Henry and Lady Clemency Rowbotham. In real life, Hong Kong had only recently welcomed its third colonial administrator in a single year.
Upon the sixth governor Sir Richard MacDonnell's retirement to the United Kingdom, he was briefly replaced by the Commander of British Troops, Lieutenant General Henry Wase Whitfield, who stood in as lieutenant governor for five days. Hong Kong's popular seventh governor, Sir Arthur Kennedy, along with his wife Lady Georgina would have occupied Government House for some six months or so by the time of Fogg's arrival.
Upon the sixth governor Sir Richard MacDonnell's retirement to the United Kingdom, he was briefly replaced by the Commander of British Troops, Lieutenant General Henry Wase Whitfield, who stood in as lieutenant governor for five days. Hong Kong's popular seventh governor, Sir Arthur Kennedy, along with his wife Lady Georgina would have occupied Government House for some six months or so by the time of Fogg's arrival.
At the conclusion, Fogg and his friends board the SS Carnatic, which sank in 1869. It was a ship that traveled regularly between Suez and Bombay, not from Hong Kong to Japan.