Then & Now | Diplomat who wanted Portuguese in Hong Kong to celebrate their culture left disappointed
- In post-war Hong Kong, Eduardo Brazão encouraged the local Portuguese to appreciate their culture, but his enthusiasm was not widely shared
Cultural organisations that brought together otherwise disparate people through similar interests, shared backgrounds and common causes have a long history in Hong Kong. Some organisations flourished and continued for decades while others lasted only a few years.
How these bodies came about, their original aims, the interesting personalities involved over time, and the variegated factors that caused them to eventually vanish, reveal much about Hong Kong society.
Instituto Português de Hongkong (the Portuguese Institute of Hong Kong), the brainchild of Eduardo Brazão, a particularly farsighted, energetic and scholarly Portuguese consul general, was one such cultural body that briefly flourished from the late 1940s before petering out in the early 50s.
Born in Lisbon in 1907, Brazão was a distinguished career diplomat who was also a trained historian with a keen interest in his subject; he was a member of the Portuguese Academy of History and also the Royal Academy of History in Madrid, Spain.
From his arrival in 1946, Brazão threw himself into the emerging cultural life that marked post-war Hong Kong, largely fomented by the diverse range of people who lived in the British colony after the Chinese civil war.
