The Paris Olympics are nearing their grand finale; that’s it for another four years. With the French capital having hosted the 1924 Games, the event’s return to France a century later makes an attractive symmetry.
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While athletes from Hong Kong have taken part in the Olympics since the interwar years, until 1948 they took part as Chinese national competitors under the Republic of China banner – not as a distinct regional entity. Teams and individuals from the People’s Republic of China, which came into existence in 1949, were recognised as PRC representative teams only after widespread diplomatic derecognition of the Nationalist government through the 1970s.
Teams and individuals from Taiwan – where the Nationalist government had retreated in 1949 – continued to compete internationally under “Chinese Taipei”, a compromise and essentially a tacit acknowledgement of the one-China policy. While everyone knows where they are from – and who they really represent – this tactful designation ensures no wider political feathers are ruffled and broader national unity (however tentative) is presented to the wider world.
Swimmer Yvonne Yeung, also known as Yeung Sau-king, represented the Republic of China in 1936. Photo: Handout
Swimmer Yvonne Yeung, also known as Yeung Sau-king, represented the Republic of China in 1936. Born in Hong Kong in 1919, she trained from a young age through the South China Athletic Association, which, in the 1930s, had harbourfront swimming facilities at Tsat Tsz Mui, all long since lost to reclamation. Although Yeung had won numerous medals at earlier national and regional sporting events, at the 1936 Berlin Olympics she did not advance beyond preliminary heats. She retired from competitive swimming in the late 1930s, and married B.L. Tao, a well-known local jockey, in 1939.
Yeung retired from competitive swimming in the late 1930s, and married B.L. Tao, a well-known local jockey, in 1939; this newspaper clipping shows their wedding announcement. Photo: Handout
Yeung worked clandestinely in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong for Nationalist intelligence in 1942-43, before moving to Shanghai, where she continued these activities until the end of the war. Known for the rest of her life as “China’s mermaid”, after her post-war divorce from Tao and remarriage to an Indonesian-Chinese businessman, Yeung lived in Thailand for several years, returned to Hong Kong in 1953, subsequently emigrated to Vancouver, Canada, in 1978, and died there in 1982, after falling from a ladder.
