From the Hong Kong Telegraph 1919-11-07:
CHINATOWN'S RITZ
THE HEIGHT OF NATIVE SPLENDOUR.
OVER $200,000 SPENT AT WEST POINT.
(Hongkong Telegraph Special.]
Amidst a blaze of light and to the accompaniment of many noises, the patron of a Chinese hotel takes his meal and pleasure on at any rate at West Point. In a positive fairyland of electricity, in palatial rooms furnished with blackwood and hung with mirrors he takes his meal of delicacies, listening the while to music that pleases. Whitty Street and the roads contiguous to it have long been nightly scenes of native splendour attracting hundreds with money to spend and friends to entertain. The largest hotels have vied with each other in attractiveness, but there has now been launched forth a hotel enterprise that puts the others into a comparatively dim shade. To Europeans it may matter little what happens at West Point, but it is the Piccadilly of Chinatown. and there is great stir over what is coming, into being. And justifiable stir, too, for the last word in native catering and furnishing is about to be written. The Kam Ling Hotel is soon to open, and it is a very big day that is coming. We of this end may think it little, but down West it marks a period.
As one alights off the tram-car at the Whitty Street "Island" the building. which has cost over $90,000 το erect, directly faces one. Its contour, picked out by hundreds of electric lights, shows that it is a four storied structure of undoubted solidity. It is not imposing- Chinese buildings seldom are- and it has no architectural lines that please. But when one goes to dine and spend one does not stand outside to admirer builder’s art- so neither will we. At the entrance the first thrill of pleasure runs through the visitor. A brilliant vestibule, be-mirrored and resplendent, awaits the crossing. Cases of curios are dotted here and there, and on a brilliantly painted celling, ducks, teal, and many another bird, are represented as lying in the light of a very real moon. There is nothing further here to interest the diner for he passes upstairs to splendours new. But there is more of interest on the ground floor, this being a generating plant worthy of the name. A 75 horse-power three-cylinder oil engine drives a dynamo generating 2.200 volts. To make a safe and usable current three ten- kilowatt transformers step down the voltage to 110. No fewer than 1,060 lights have to be fed, two lifts will have to be worked and 120 Westinghouse fans kept going.