April 15, 1988

Seventy-six And Not Out For An Old China Hand
Eric Ellis, Hong Kong

Bill Doran arrived in the British colony of Hong Kong in 1938, a young engineer with Melbourne establishment firm Humes Pipes in the days when "old man (Walter Robert) Hume was boss cocky". "It was a rough old town in those days. When I arrived there were only 25 Australians in Hong Kong (today there are more than 8000) and the Brits treated us like we were creatures from Mars," he recalls.

Doran left Humes just after the war and has since made a handsome fortune building a large engineering works and foundry, Narod Steel Fabrications Ltd, which makes and fits cement tumblers to hundreds of cement mixers in Hong Kong and China. With his white hair and walking stick, he is known on the teeming Kowloon streets by everyone from the old rickshaw pullers who feed his parking meter with days' worth of coins while he is off on business to the washerwomen who give him boxes of chocolates at Christmas. His Chinese acquaintances call him "Ah-bak," a Cantonese term of endearment reserved for respected elderly uncles. "They are beautiful people, but if they turn on you they can break you without fear or favor," he says.

Doran speaks fluent Cantonese and has a working knowledge of Mandarin, Shanghainese and a handful of other dialects, a rare ability for a foreigner in Hong Kong and the key to his good relations across the border. Friends say he reads the Chinese newspapers before he reads the English ones. He has also endorsed the famed Chinese work ethic and has no intention of returning to Australia, which is he says is the "most blessed country on earth but is inhabited by a lot of lazy buggers".

Doran began doing business with China when Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang nationalists still held sway, and, 50 years later, brings a trader's logic to his dealings with the Middle Kingdom. He also offers a few lessons for aspiring China traders.

"The mystery of China is that there is no mystery. It's a foreign myth, it's what all the academics like to think," he says. "Once you learn their language and can speak to them on their own level, the world can open up for you. It's all give and take, and you have to be very patient."

Doran has witnessed momentous changes in Hong Kong and China but has always managed to keep his communication lines open. He has been through Hong Kong's countless booms and busts, seen the atrocities of the Japanese occupation and the bitter civil war between Chiang's nationalists and Mao's communists.

"The toughest time for us was probably during the Cultural Revolution. We were the 'long noses' and very much the persona non grata. We could only write or telex and hope that our messages got through. We still did business."

The British handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 will probably be Doran's next milestone. "1997 has been here for five years now. If it wasn't for China's influence, Hong Kong wouldn't be half the place it is today. The Chinese have been exploiting Hong Kong for years," he says.

At last count, Doran had filled seven passports with Chinese visas and has lost count of the times he has crossed the border. "I stopped after 200, and that was a few years ago now. The Chinese probably think I'm an illegal immigrant."

Strictly speaking, he has been in Hong Kong for "only" 43 years, arriving in 1938 but escaping to Singapore on orders from the Humes head office only weeks before the Japanese overran the territory on Christmas Day, 1941, and occupied it for the duration. "We made it to Singapore only to find we were out of the frying pan and into the same fire," he recalls.

Doran and his young family were bundled into a Japanese internment camp but escaped after just two weeks, thanks to his wife's close links to the Chinese resistance movement. They got out to Dutch-held Java by boat but on arrival were promptly arrested by "the bloody Dutch" on suspicion of being Japanese spies. "Nobody could believe that we had actually escaped the Japanese," he says. "The Dorans got out again, made it to Colombo and eventually reached a British Red Cross camp in Bombay. All I wanted to do was get back to Australia and report to my bosses, but I kept being forced in the opposite direction," he laughs.

The Dorans finally got on a British troop carrier and spent 13 perilous days dodging Japanese submarines before landing in Melbourne "without a brass razoo but a full case of condensed milk, a wife and a baby daughter."

His reception at Humes, however, was not what he expected. "All old man Hume wanted to know about was what had happened to his equipment from Hong Kong. He wouldn't even discuss any back pay, or what we'd just been through, the miserable old bugger he was."

Doran solicited a $10 loan, caught a train to Sydney and three years later found himself back in China with a United Nations team repairing the war-devastated country. That gesture still has not been forgotten by the Chinese.

Doran remembers swinging old Shanghai, the Paris of the East, but also recalls the subsequent demise of the city when a wheelbarrow full of Chinese currency could not even buy a cup of tea. He sees similarities to Hong Kong today and sincerely hopes the British colony does not go the same way when the Chinese take over. The Chinese need Hong Kong, but they also needed Shanghai and look what happened to that. I hope they've learned their lesson. They have to leave it alone and let it function as it always has," he says.

Over the years Doran reckons he has generated $A100 million worth of business for the Chinese from his own and other foreign firms. But despite his good relations, he is vehement about the way foreigners should handle the country. "China should always be treated with respect but from afar, from a place like Hong Kong. I wouldn't invest a cent in China because if you wanted to get it out you'd be lucky to see it again. Everyone wants a slice of the pie. Once you put your money in China it's there for good. They stick to it like Araldite," he says.

"These blokes like Alan Bond get it easy today. They wouldn't have lasted five minutes a few years ago. The Chinese know that, they're not stupid. These people come up here and think they can do business the same way as they can in Australia.

"All these blokes who come up to China today think they know it all. They brag about their good connections at the top in China, but good connections mean nothing when the fella they were dealing with gets sent out to some farm in the provinces. It's important to keep good relations with the little man. You've got to keep the little man happy because you'll never know when he'll become the big man," he says. Doran says China is no place for get-rich-quick entrepreneurs. If they don't respect you, they'll do you cold. You've got to be one of them." And that is seasoned advice from one of the last of the real old China hands.