1959 - Two Gun Cohen & the tiger skin

The Tiger Dies and Leaves a Skin

Michael Alderton (essarem) recalls: From the mid-1950's to the mid-1960’s, Major General Morris Abraham “Two-Gun” Cohen was making regular trips to Mainland China to visit old friends, and to broker sizeable business deals - involving such big-ticket items as commercial airliners, communications equipment, tractors, wheat, and cotton - between Communist China and the West. Each time he slipped in and out of the Bamboo Curtain he would make a brief stop-over in Hong Kong, and it was on these occasions that he would make contact with my father, Paul D. Alderton, a Hong Kong based international commodities broker. On one such occasion during the spring of 1959, the General made a visit to our family home. At that time we lived at Stanley, a neighbourhood located on the jutting promontory that formed the southern-most tip of Hong Kong Island. One Saturday afternoon my father had quite unexpectedly arrived home in the company of his friend, General Cohen. They had met up earlier that day somewhere in the city and, during the course of their conversations, they had decided to visit a site on the Stanley Peninsula where civilians had been held prisoner by the Japanese military during the Second World War. General Cohen had himself been interned there for just under two years; and my father, eager to gain some firsthand knowledge of this place of historical interest so close to our home, had persuaded the General to accompany him on a tour of the area. As my father and his friend set off from our house, I was invited to tag along. On reaching the site of the former prison camp, I hovered around in the background while General Cohen and my father became engrossed in conversations about the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, and about life in the internment camp at Stanley; and I continued to follow in their footsteps as the two friends moved about the Stanley Peninsula, by car and on foot, noting various places of interest along the way. It was a hot spring day, and in due course we all stopped to rest in the shade of a collection of large boulders. While cooling off there, General Cohen turned to me and suggested that I should be on the lookout for tigers, since one had been sighted on this very spot during the war. I remember my father being somewhat bemused by his friend's warning; and, as if sensing my father's disbelief, the General proceeded to tell us how, during the 1930's, South China Tigers had been sighted quite regularly in that mainland portion of Hong Kong known as the New Territories. On occasions they had even attacked and killed villagers living in that rural area. General Cohen had then gone on to offer the suggestion that, as Japanese troops attacked the colony, a tiger might well have swam across the narrow stretch of water to Hong Kong Island in order to escape the fighting on the mainland. This tiger had then found its way to the Stanley Peninsula on the southern-most tip of the Island. Hungry, and with no place further to go, it had late one night attacked a sentry who was keeping watch over a dark and quiet corner of the internment camp. This guard had managed to frighten the animal off with a round from his weapon, but for the remainder of the night it was thought that the tiger had hidden among the very rocks around which the three of us were resting. As General Cohen continued his story, he told us how many of the camp internees had scoffed at the suggestion that a ferocious tiger had been roaming around in their midst that night; but in the light of day it was not too long before the unfortunate animal had been tracked down and killed, and all doubts about its existence were then finally laid to rest. He described to us his lingering memories of that tiger, recalling in some detail how he had caught sight of it leaving the prison camp bound for the nearby, long-established Chinese township of Chek Chue (Red Pillars), in which was situated the oldest (1767) Tin Hau temple on the Island. The magnificent beast had been strung up by its four legs and suspended below a bamboo pole, and the two guards assigned to carry it away had staggered under the great weight of the laden pole resting heavily on their shoulders. Returning to my dad’s recently imported Dodge station wagon, we headed back inland along the peninsula to the art-deco Stanley Hotel where we left the car and walked the short distance to a rather remote rural area of Stanley called Ma Hang (Horse Gully). Here, nestled among market gardens, was a temple dedicated to the Goddess, Tin Hau - the Queen of Heaven and Protectoress of Seafarers. The temple was a somewhat windowless building with a grey tiled roof and weathered white-washed walls, and it was watched over by two large granite temple dogs. Plastered around its entranceway were strips of pealing red paper, weathered pink by the rain and the sun, and bearing faded black Chinese calligraphy. Passing through that darkened doorway, we left the bright sunlight and heat of the hot spring day behind us; and as our eyes gradually re-adjusted themselves to the darkness, we saw, beyond upwardly curling streams of incense smoke, the unmistakable outline of a tiger skin hanging on a smoke-stained wall beside the altar. On my previous visits to this temple I had peeped in momentarily, but I had never ventured past the threshold. Now, for the first time, I was surrounded by the heavy fragrance that filled this dark, quiet, cool room; and I felt as though all my senses had been set on edge. I remember how General Cohen had been lost in deep thought as he stared for some time at the tiger's skin. Thinking back now to that occasion reminds me of an old Chinese proverb that translates something along the lines of: The tiger dies and leaves a skin; a person dies and leaves their name. These few well-chosen words were assembled to cause one to reflect upon the similarity between the durable nature of an awe-inspiring tiger's skin, and the enduring reputation of a notable person. As I now recall this ancient Chinese saying, I cannot help but wonder how the good and great name of Morris Abraham Cohen might, itself, be passed on to future generations. We soon departed from that eerie but spiritual place to return to the Dodge parked by the Stanley Hotel, and it was not too long before my father was driving General Cohen back to his hotel room in the city.