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Regulating Information Asymmetry
in the Residential Real Estate Market

This book conducts a detailed examination of the current form of the Hong Kong
residential property regulatory system: the 2013 Residential Properties (First-
hand Sales) Ordinance (Cap 621). The author sheds light on how the legislation
promotes a number of values including information symmetry, consumer
protection, the free market and business efficacy. It provides a detailed account of
how this regulatory mechanism has evolved over the past three decades to catch
unconscionable sales tactics (such as selective information and/or misrepre­
sentation of location, size, completion date and past transactions) and monitor
sales practices in order to protect the interests of stakeholders in this ever-changing
first-hand residential property market.
The book breaks down this complicated subject matter by focusing a number of
chapters each on a specific attribute of the residential property on sale. It then
examines the various channels through which the information is communicated to
the prospective buyer, and discusses misrepresentation of the key information in
sales of residential properties as criminal liability. The tension between consumer’s
rights on one hand and the pursuit of free market principles on the other is but one
example of the conflicting values thoroughly discussed in the book, others include
superstition vs. modernization and clarity vs. flexibility.
Aimed at those with an interest in consumer protection and transparency-
oriented legislation in commercialized real estate transactions, this book seeks to
provide an in-depth discussion of the latest trends and directions of travel.

Devin S. Lin, PhD researches on Construction Law and Property Law and is now
teaching in the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, China.
Routledge Studies in International Real Estate

The Routledge Studies in International Real Estate series presents a forum for the
presentation of academic research into international real estate issues. Books in
the series are broad in their conceptual scope and reflect an inter-disciplinary
approach to Real Estate as an academic discipline.

Oiling the Urban Economy

Land, Labour, Capital, and the State in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana
Franklin Obeng-Odoom

Real Estate, Construction and Economic Development in Emerging Market

Economies
Edited by Raymond T. Abdulai, Franklin Obeng-Odoom, Edward Ochieng and
Vida Maliene

Econometric Analyses of International Housing Markets

Rita Li and Kwong Wing Chau

Sustainable Communities and Urban Housing

A Comparative European Perspective
Montserrat Pareja Eastaway and Nessa Winston

Regulating Information Asymmetry in the Residential Real Estate Market

The Hong Kong Experience
Devin Lin
Regulating Information
Asymmetry in the Residential
Real Estate Market
The Hong Kong Experience

Devin S. Lin
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Emiliana Armano, Arianna Bove
and Annalisa Murgia; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Devin S. Lin to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Lin, Devin S.Title: Regulating information asymmetry in the
residential real estate market : the Hong Kong experience / Devin S. Lin.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon [UK] ; New York : Routledge, 2017. |
Series: Routledge studies in international real estate | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016055543| ISBN 9781138231399 (hardback : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9781315315409 (ebook : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Real estate business--Law and legislation--China--Hong
Kong. | Vendors and purchasers--China--Hong Kong. | Residential real
estate--China--Hong Kong. | Land grants--Law and legislation--China--
Hong Kong.
Classification: LCC KNQ9317 .L56 2017 | DDC 343.5125/025--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016055543

ISBN: 978-1-138-23139-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-31540-9 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby
Dedicated to Professor Tang Lieying. Ph.D,
my mother, who inspired me to become a legal researcher
Contents

List of illustrations ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgement xiii

1 Introduction 1

2 The way to legislation 17

3 Saleable area 37

4 Gross floor area 58

5 Internal structures, fittings and finishes 77

6 Location 93

7 Floor number 118

8 Date of completion and lease term 130

9 Deed of mutual covenant and land grant conditions 144

10 Price list 155

11 Sales arrangement 168

12 Transaction 183

13 Information channels 203

viii Contents
14 False or misleading information and misrepresentation 227

15 Regulation by legislation 253

Index 271
Illustrations

Figures
5.1 Floor Plan, 8/F-11/F & 16/F – 19/F Block 25, Double Cove
Starview Prime84
6.1 Satellite View of the Ap Lei Chau Praya Road on 7 January, 2007 105
6.2 The Shatin to Central Link and MTR Kwun Tong Line Extension
2009111

Tables
1.1 Population by Type of Housing, 2004, 2009 and 20147
3.1 Area of Residential Properties in the Phase, Mount Nicholson
Phase I43
4.1 Common Area Constituents in the Latitude, the Aria and Yoho
Mid-Town60
4.2 Template for Price List, Appendix to Annex II in LACO CM No.6269
4.3 Template for Area Schedule, Appendix III(A) to Annex II in
LACO CM No.6270
4.4 Suggested Template for Price List by the Steering Committee
in 201171
4.5 Suggested Template for Area Schedule by the Steering Committee
in 201172
6.1 Private Domestic – Average Prices by Class for the Years 2014
and 2015 95
6.2 Districts and Sub-districts of HKSAR100
7.1 Omitted Floor or House Numbers in Recent Developments121
12.1 Template for Register for ASP , REDA, November 2009189
12.2 Template for Register for ASP, REDA, August 2010190
12.3 Template for Register of PASPs and ASPs by the Steering
Committee in 2011191
12.4 Registration of Transactions, Alassio192
12.5 Template of the Register of Transaction kept for the purpose of
section 60 of the Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Ordinance,
SRPA 2013194
x Illustrations
Maps
Map 6.1 The Satellite image of Hammer Hill, Nagu Chi Wan and
Choi Hung in July 2016108
Map 6.2 The Contour Map of Hammer Hill, Nagu Chi Wan and
Choi Hung in July 2016109
Preface

The sale of residential flats before completion of their physical construction has a
history of more than half a century in Hong Kong. It has been a feature of the
housing market and a cornerstone of the economy for decades. Unfortunately,
because buyers have no actual property to inspect before signing to buy and must
rely on the seller for information, it has been a source of complaint and scene of
crafty practices for almost as long. The Hong Kong government has made repeated
efforts to moderate certain of those practices, relying on administrative measures,
negotiated self-regulation and ultimately on legislation.
Dr. Devin Lin’s admirable book traces the history of these governmental efforts
and the difficulties that they encountered. The text describes the questionable
tactics employed by developers and estate agents in marketing uncompleted
developments. The book is the product of years of research during which Dr. Lin
visited numerous new developments. He personally observed the sales tactics that
he describes. He collected, inspected and compared countless brochures and other
commercial literature and spoke to dozens of participants in the market.
The Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Ordinance was eventually
enacted in June 2012. This legislation includes several provisions for which Dr.
Lin had been advocating. In this book he describes its complex provisions in a
systematic way and casts a critical eye on how the Ordinance is working. He
provides a thoughtful, distinctive, independent voice in the debate about an
effective regulatory regime. Those interested in off-the-plan sales will read this
account with interest and profit.

Malcolm Merry
University of Hong Kong
The Residential Properties (Firsthand Sales) Ordinance (Cap 621) can be
downloaded from the homepage of the Sales of First-hand Residential Properties
Authority, The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region at
http://www.srpa.gov.hk/en/ordinance.html
Acknowledgement

It was in 2008 that I started the research on the sale of uncompleted first-hand
residential properties in Hong Kong at the University of Hong Kong, under the
supervision of Professor Alice Lee and Professor S. H. Goo. Despite the protracted
local debate and early systematic studies on the regulatory regime (perhaps best
represented by the 1991 Study on the Disclosure of Information to Prospective
Purchasers of Uncompleted Unit by the Consumer Council and the 1995 Report
on Description of Flats on Sale by the Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong),
the regime of control based on the Lands Department Consent Scheme had not
changed much before 2007. The year 2008 marked the beginning of extensive
reform by the Hong Kong government within the framework of the Consent
Scheme to tackle information asymmetry and unconscionable sales practices in
the sale of first-hand residential properties. The magnitude of the issue and the
pressing need for a solution led to heated debates in 2010 on potential legislation.
By the end of that year, the Steering Committee on Regulation of Sale of First-
hand Residential Properties by Legislation had been established by the then Chief
Executive, Dr Donald Tsang. One year later, in November 2011, the government
completed the draft of the Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Bill, based on
the Steering Committee’s deliberation over the provisions of the new law. After a
three-month consultation period, the revised Bill was introduced in the Legislative
Council in March 2012. It took another four months of legislative debate and
deliberation before the Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Ordinance (Cap
621) was finally published in the Gazette on 6 July 2012. Four months later, in
October 2012, I obtained my Ph.D with a thesis discussing this new piece of
legislation. In April 2013, the Ordinance entered into force and the Sales of First-
hand Residential Properties Authority was set up to implement the Ordinance.
This book provides the very first systematic and comprehensive academic
discussion and examination of the function of the new regulatory regime and the
implementation of the new legislation by the Sales of First-hand Residential
Properties Authority since April 2013. The year 2016 saw the first successful
prosecutions under the Ordinance against three vendors of first-hand residential
properties, in respect of the sale of Ocean One in 2013, the sale of Graces (a phase
in the development of Providence Bay) in 2013, and the sale of Full Art Court in
2014. At the time of writing, almost four years have passed since the enactment of
xiv Acknowledgement
the Ordinance, during which time the new regulatory regime centred on this
unique piece of legislation has proven its effectiveness in promoting transparency
in the first-hand residential property sector.
Much has happened in the sector over the last nine years (2008–2016), and it is
now a pertinent juncture for a timely academic review of these developments,
sharing with the world Hong Kong’s innovative experience in creating a
transparent and efficient residential property market. I have been fortunate to
witness the lead-up to Hong Kong’s unprecedented legislation to promote
information disclosure and regulate misleading sales practices in the property
sector, while carrying out my research at the very frontiers of this area of law, with
the guidance and encouragement of the following mentors, colleagues and friends.
First, my sincerest expression of appreciation goes to my primary Ph.D
supervisor Professor Alice Lee, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Law, for her
unparalleled supervision from 2008 to 2012. I can never thank Professor Lee
enough for her confidence in me and my research from the very beginning.
Professor Lee played an instrumental role in inspiring my research topic and has
guided me since through a transformative process, with four years of continuous
attention and innovative coaching – from the drafting of the very first research
proposal on the topic (submitted in January 2008) to the revision of the thesis
(submitted in October 2012). I hope this book can reflect to some extent the
elegance and clarity of her works. The very first piece of academic work I have
read in this area was the joint paper by Professor Lee and Professor Goo. Professor
Lee took me to the University of Macau in December 2008 when she presented
the joint paper at an international conference.
I would also like to extend my sincere gratitude to my co-supervisor Professor
S. H. Goo, Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong, who started the
pioneering research project on regulating off-plan sales in Hong Kong, for the
research topic and supervision. It was my tremendous honour to join him and
Professor Lee in the research, and I am greatly indebted to them for their continuous
encouragement and inspiration, through their helpful ideas, comments, guidance
and advice in discussing the issues, focus and methodology of my research.
Professor Goo’s 2010 paper published in The Conveyancer and Property Lawyer,
which studies the effectiveness of the Consent Scheme before its 2010 reform and
shaped the subsequent regulations and legislation, served as one of my early
inspirations for studying the evolution of the regulatory regime. I am particularly
grateful to Professor Goo for his introduction to Professor Malcolm Merry and his
support for my lecture entitled ‘New Rules for Sales of Uncompleted Flats’ in
Law Lectures for Practitioners 2010. It was also through Professor Goo’s
introduction that I became acquainted with Dr Martin Dixon of the University of
Cambridge and Professor Roger Smith of the University of Oxford in 2011, both
of whom have further influenced my research on land law.
I would like to express my deep appreciation to Professor Malcolm Merry of
the University of Hong Kong, for his guidance in the writing process and for his
detailed comments on the many drafts of this book. In 2010 I was introduced by
Professor Merry to Ms Teresa Wong of the Legal Advisory and Conveyancing
 Acknowledgement xv
Office in the Lands Department, whose answers to my questions led me to a
deeper understanding of the regulatory regime, especially the numerous
administrative measures first introduced to the Consent Scheme in June 2010 to
enhance transparency. As a major breakthrough, on 30 September 2010 I delivered
my first lecture on the new measures introduced to the Consent Scheme on June
2010 in the Law Lectures for Practitioners 2010; the manuscript of the lecture
was written under the edition of Professor Merry. In March 2012, I attended the
Modern Study in Property Law 2012 at the University of Southampton with
Professor Merry and presented a paper in the postgraduate research student’s
conference which now forms part of Chapter 4 of this book. I am fortunate to have
the continuous attention and guidance of Professor Merry after graduating from
the University of Hong Kong. My writing has been heavily influenced by his
works in this area, particularly his 2008 conference paper delivered at the HKU-
NUS-SMU Symposium in Singapore, which provided a detailed analysis on the
sale, financing, construction of uncompleted residential flats in Hong Kong from
a purchasing consumer’s perspective.
My gratitude is also extended to Professor Philip Britton, whom I met through
the introduction of Dr Leslie Turano Taylor and Dr John Barber during my visit
to the King’s College London School of Law (as it then was) in the spring of 2011,
when he was chairing the Centre of Construction Law. Professor Britton has been
guiding me in my studies and research on UK construction law and consumer
protection law since then and continues to advise me on parallel UK issues. His
works on UK construction law is a model of leading scholarship in this fast-
moving area of law. I have benefited immensely from Professor Britton’s
comments on the final draft of this book, in particular his update on the latest
developments in consumer protection legislation in the UK.
I wish to thank His Honour Judge Humphrey Lloyd QC for publishing the
article on legislating floor numbers in Hong Kong (now part of Chapter 7 of this
book) in the International Construction Law Review in 2015, and to Mr Andrew
Burr for two co-related publications in the Construction Law Journal in 2013 and
2014, which have now become part of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 respectively.
I would also like to thank Professor K. W. Chau of the Faculty of Architecture,
the University of Hong Kong for his comments and suggestions on my thesis,
based on his profound understanding of the real estate market in Hong Kong. I am
indebted to Dr Arthur McInnis for his guidance on my studies and research on
Hong Kong construction law and his comments on the final draft of this book.
Furthermore, I deeply value the comments from Mr Matthew Bell of the University
of Melbourne and other members of the Society of Construction Law Australia.
Throughout the winding path to completing this research, I have had the
pleasure of growing with and learning from two outstanding peers and young
scholars in property and construction law: Dr Louise Cheung of the University of
Southampton, and Mr Mathias Cheung, Barrister at Atkin Chambers, who was
recently awarded first Prize by the Society of Construction Law UK for his 2015
Hudson Prize paper on liquidated damages and penalty clauses. I owe both of
them a debt of gratitude for their unfailing support and insightful observations.
xvi Acknowledgement
I wish to express my great appreciation to Miss Lucy Yen of Yen, Yu & Co.,
Solicitors, for all her encouragement and strong support over the years. She has
provided me with encouragement and guidance since we met each other in 2008.
I would also like to offer my special thanks to Miss Coria Cheng and Miss
Gloria Wong of Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong and Miss Betty
Lam of Lui Che Woo Law Library for their kind help.
For the publication of this book, I am greatly indebted to Mr Ed Needle of
Taylor & Francis for his guidance and advice. Mr Needle suggested the title of
this book, Regulating Information Asymmetry in the Residential Real Estate
Market, after reading the first draft, which perfectly summarizes the gist of my
work. I thank Mr Matthew Turpie and Mr Scott Oakley of Taylor & Francis for
all their patience, encouragement and professional help in editing this book, which
has enabled me to include in this edition of the book the discussion on the sales of
Ocean One, Graces as well as the Court of Appeal decision in Yang Dandan v
Hong Kong Resort Co. Ltd [2016] HKEC 1722. And I thank Miss Lisa Sharp for
her assistance and help in the production of this book.
Although I can never emphasize enough the support and contribution by the
people mentioned above, all omissions and mistakes remain my sole responsibility.
For this special period of my life, I have had the privilege and honour to receive
the guidance and training on matters outside my research from three extraordinary
entrepreneurs: Mr Desmond Cheung of Interior Contract International Ltd, Mr
Derek Chong of Oceanarch International Co. and Mr Daniel Wong. Their wisdom
has transformed my understanding of the construction industry, the commercial
world and life in general, and this has also been critical to the successful and
timely completion of my research.
As this is my first book on a legal subject, I take the opportunity to thank the
following prominent scholars who have been helping me in my legal studies and
research: Professor Zhang Xianchu, Professor Fu Hualing, Professor Albert Chen,
Professor Johannes Chan, Professor Michael Wilkinson, and Professor Rick
Glofcheski of the University of Hong Kong; Professor Kelvin Low of the
Singapore Management University; and Professor Chen Li of Fudan University.
I am blessed to have had the incredible companionship of Mr Yury Elsov and my
brother Mr Tang Linyao along the journey. Last, I would like to acknowledge the
support of my parents – I can never thank my father, Professor Lin Yiquan, enough
for his wisdom and encouragement, and I am forever indebted to my mother,
Professor Tang Lieying of the Southwest University of Political Science and Law,
for her love and support. Her pioneering writing and nationwide publications on
Chinese civil law and property law are the greatest source of inspiration for my legal
studies and research. I dedicate this book to her.
Devin Lin
11 January 2017
1 Introduction

The ground-breaking Hong Kong approach

Consumer protection is a fascinating subject that has remained on the fringe of
property law and construction law for too long. With the fast development in the
private real estate market worldwide in recent years, these two seemingly remote
disciplines start to interact with each other. Malcolm Merry (2008) recorded the
very beginning of an emerging awareness among flat purchasers of their status as
consumers in the 1980s when property became big business in Hong Kong and the
corresponding request for government control to promote fair practice in the sale
and purchase of flats as follows:

They became more discriminating and realized that as customers they had a
choice and as consumers they had, or ought to have, rights. It was no longer
enough for the government just to make sure that the flats were built. Buyers
expected to be protected from the sharp practices of developers and their
agents.

This phenomenon suggests the connection point between consumer protection

law and property law may be administrative or legislative regulation for protection
of consumer rights in the transaction of properties, perhaps in particular first-hand
residential properties, which aims to provide purchaser-consumers with access to
relevant and important information regarding the residential property on sale. In
the absence of mandatory regulation, much of this information can be hidden by
the vendor, who may not otherwise be obliged to disclose important details under
the common law doctrine caveat emptor.
On the other hand, government control is a much-discussed topic for property
law and construction law. The degree of government control in regulating sales
of commercial properties is a subject of much debate in different jurisdictions.
The central goal of government regulation in respect of property transaction – in
Hong Kong and elsewhere – is to promote a market that is efficient and
transparent for consumers. A couple of years ago, it was considered that there
was a serious lack of comprehensive and effective laws and regulations in the
sale of residential flats in Hong Kong; it was then suggested that an appropriate
2 Introduction
regulatory system in the sector must balance market efficiency, consumer
protection and developers’ interests (Goo 2010). Merry (2008) expressed a
similar view when he concluded that the government regulation then ‘is
generally effective to ensure that the flats are built and delivered to purchasers
and that adequate arrangements are made for the management and administration
of the building thereafter but that it is deficient in promoting fair practice in the
sale and purchase of the flats on sale’.
As a general principle, government regulation in the property market should be
balanced between two values: firstly, the value of a transparent, efficient market
where both the vendor and the purchaser are equally able to access key information
regarding the property on sale; and secondly, the interests of the free market,
where the details of the transaction should mainly be subject to the contract agreed
and entered into freely by the vendor and the purchaser. At the same time, the
vendor shall enjoy certain rights as the owner of the property, i.e. the freedom to
dispose of her property and the freedom not to sell.
In any jurisdiction where the value of the property is subject to market
evaluation, the amount of money involved in the sale of any residential property
tends to be significant for an ordinary purchaser. The damage the purchaser will
suffer if the development is not completed, is delayed in its completion, is defective
or is of a smaller size than promised, or if the vendor is not a qualified vendor of
the property (i.e., with a defective title, without the qualification to sell at all, or
without the qualification to sell before completion of construction), will be too
great to recover in a short period of time. Some observers argue that the non-equal
footing bargaining power between purchasers and developers further manifests
the need of government to protect the interests of the general public in first-hand
property sales (Chan et al. 2015). Indeed, it is both the unequal position between
the vendor and the purchaser and the risk the purchaser is taking in entering into
the agreement for sale and purchase that require the intervention of the government
to oversee the transaction. The question then becomes one of the degree of
regulation.
Hong Kong has been known as the world’s freest economy. The Special
Administrative Region of People’s Republic of China ranks No. 1 in the 2016
Index of Economic Freedom. Quite remarkably, the Index scored Hong Kong
97.4 out of 100 in terms of business freedom under the category of regulatory
efficiency (Miller and Kim 2016).1 How should the sales of residential properties
be regulated in the world’s freest economy?
The sale practices were loosely regulated until the last decade of the twentieth
century; but the need for consumer protection in this field of activity was firstly
discussed by the Consumer Council in 1977 (CC 2014) and systematically studied
in 1989 (CC 1991). With the growing concern of consumer rights in property
transactions, the regulation has steadily increased since June 2010 (Lin 2012). It
was pointed out in 2010 that the Hong Kong Government should strike a balance
between market efficiency and consumer protection on the one hand, and
developers’ interests and the fear of government intervention in the market on the
other hand (Goo 2010).
 Introduction 3
Then, in 2012, Hong Kong passed a new piece of legislation that arguably
represents the strictest regulation over sales of first-hand residential properties in
the world.
For Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the enactment of the
Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Ordinance (Cap 621) (hereafter the
Ordinance) in 2012 represents a milestone in a decade-long process of constructing
a transparent and efficient first-hand residential real estate market in the region.
The process can claim its beginning as early as the 1960s, when the first case of
incompletion occurred in the region’s earliest off-plan sales (i.e., the Peony House
Incident). The incident triggered the first efforts of government intervention and
led to the introduction of the Consent Scheme in 1969 (Fan 2005). The Scheme
exhibited an awareness of higher degree of consumer protection in the 1990s
where the focus of government monitoring gradually shifted to information
disclosure. The process has been accelerated since the first decade of the
millennium with a growing request for frank and accurate information disclosure
in the market. After rounds of development where more and more substantive
measures were introduced to the Consent Scheme from June 2010, the need for
consolidating all the rules in the form of one legislation emerged. Finally, the Bill
drafted by the Transport and Housing Bureau passed the legislature after three
readings and a number of amendments in 2012. The Ordinance came into full
effect on 29 April 2013.
As such, seemingly paradoxically to its pursuit of business freedom, Hong
Kong has passed a law to standardize sale practices of first-hand residential
properties. Although the new legislation mainly operates on the acts of developers
(some of its provisions apply to real estate agents too), the law is grounded in the
need for consumer protection in the residential real estate market. It has placed the
value of constructing a transparent, efficient market over the value of maintaining
a free market with minimum government intervention. In other words, Hong
Kong has given its unequivocal answer in giving priority to consumer protection
and the construction of a transparent and efficient market at the costs of strong
government intervention with substantive aggressive regulation over a market in
which there has been a high degree of business freedom.2
Such preference is evident in the legislative purpose of the Ordinance: i.e., to
enhance the transparency and fairness of the sales arrangements and transactions
of first-hand residential properties and consumer protection, and provide a level
playing field for vendors of first-hand residential properties (LC 2013). The Sales
of First-hand Residential Properties Authority (SRPA) established under section
86 of the Ordinance also highlights transparency as their core value (SRPA
2013). Thus the meaning of the word transparency in the context of sale of
property transaction is worthy of exploration.
To start, the word transparency in Latin etymology means being seen through;
therefore in physical science, a transparent object has the property of transmitting
light without appreciable scattering; the definition has been metaphorically
adopted by social science to ‘connote the ability of interested parties to see through
otherwise private information’ (Schnackenberg 2009).
4 Introduction
A recent liberal elaboration on the concept by Fortune Magazine suggests that
transparency means making the practices, policies, algorithms, and even code,
operating data, and future plans available to customers, employees, or business
partners – [which] runs counter to traditional business practices (Hagel III and Brown
2014). The standard is probably a bit forward-looking for any traditional business
practices including property development business. This is certainly not within the
meaning of transparency that is accorded to the Ordinance. Yet, it explains the
concept in the context of running an enterprise in the twenty-first century.
Transparency is classically defined and most frequently cited as a state of a
functional market ‘when much is known by many’ (Starke 2016). The ‘much’
which is ‘known by many’ refers to the information on various aspects of the
goods. The concept of transparency is intimately related with provision and
disclosure of information in the market. According to Black’s Law Dictionary, a
transparent market is where all prices and supply information is publicly available.
Some even suggest that when transparency relates to information flow from the
company to investors, it is simply known as ‘full disclosure’.3 An even more
thoughtful definition suggests that transparency is associated with the quality of
information a company provides to various stakeholders (Churchwell 2003).
On a more specific level, transparency is recognized, in transactional settings,
as the extent to which the seller reveals private information to the consumer
(Granados, Gupta and Kauffman 2005). According to Daniel Schwarcz (2014),
transparency, broadly construed, involves making relevant information available
to consumers. Schwarcz, in his discussion on consumer protection in insurance,
further argued that transparency-oriented regulatory strategies promote consumer
choice, harness market discipline and ensure regulatory accountability.
Any discussion on market transparency is almost inevitably accompanied with
the discussion of a co-related concept: information asymmetry. One of the earliest
discussions on the concept is the publication of the article ‘The Market for
“Lemons”: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism’ by George A. Akerlof
in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1970. In the article, George, using
‘lemon’ as a metaphor for defective cars, suggested the high possibility of
consequence of adverse selection in a market where sellers have more information
than purchasers about product quality. In general, information asymmetry occurs
where the seller possesses greater information than the purchaser in regards to the
goods of sale. Study on information asymmetry has received enormous attention
since the last decade of the twentieth century (Stiglitz 2001); the first milestone
was the award of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of
Alfred Nobel (also known as the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences) in
1996 to James A. Mirrlees and William Vickrey for their contributions to the
economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information.4 Then in 2001, for
their analyses of markets with asymmetric information, the Nobel Memorial Prize
in Economic Sciences was awarded to George Akerlof, Michael Spence and Joseph
E. Stiglitz.5 Over the past decades the pervasive effects of information asymmetry
in relation to the efficiency of the market as well as the protection of consumer
rights have been studied in many contexts (e.g., lending and borrowing, accounting,
 Introduction 5
insurance, sale of second-hand products, etc.), but a systematic study of information
asymmetry in the first-hand residential real estate market is comparatively new.
Early research on the Consent Scheme concludes that information asymmetry
and irrational behaviour of purchasers caused market failure and lack of consumer
protection in sale of off-the-plan properties in Hong Kong (Goo 2010). This is
further confirmed by recent research into regulation of the sale of first-hand
residential properties suggesting that information asymmetry between purchasers
and developers always fails in the market, and the market failure necessitates
government regulation (Chan et al. 2015). Accordingly, it was advised that the
aim of the regulatory system was to reduce the occurrence of information
asymmetry and irrational behaviour of purchasers (Goo 2010).
In the context of residential real estate market, information asymmetry occurs
wherever the vendor knows more about the property than the purchaser, which is
usually the case. As transparency demands full disclosure of quality information,
the existence of information asymmetry undermines the degree of transparency of
the market. The occurrence of information asymmetry in the residential real estate
market has been a common phenomenon in the major cities of the world. The
question is, where does asymmetric information occur in the sale of residential
properties and how does that affect the decision of the purchaser?
For a proper understanding of the meaning of transparency in residential real
estate market, we need to understand what information a vendor developer shall
make available for the sale of first-hand residential properties, for only full and
accurate disclosure eliminates information asymmetry. The kinds of information
that demand disclosure concern a variety of key aspects of the property on sale
and the transaction. In terms of the physical attributes of the residential unit, this
includes: the floor area of the property (to be discussed in Chapters 3 and 4); the
internal and external dimensions of the property and the fittings, finishes and
appliances installed within (to be discussed in Chapter 5); location and
environmental features (to be discussed in Chapter 6); in multi-storey
developments, the information on the floor the apartment is on (to be discussed in
Chapter 7). In terms of the transaction, issues include: the date of completion and
lease term of the development (to be discussed in Chapter 8); salient points of the
Deed of Mutual Covenants and Land Grant Conditions (to be discussed in Chapter
9); the price of the property (to be discussed in Chapter 10); sales arrangement (to
be discussed in Chapter 11); the agreement for sale and purchase and past
transaction record (to be discussed in Chapter 12).
With such volume of information needing disclosure in sales of residential
properties, the requirement of transparency also concerns the construction of
information channels to systematically present the information to prospective
purchasers and the public. In the sale of residential properties in Hong Kong,
major information channels include sales brochures, advertisements, price lists,
registers of transaction, show flats and websites designated by the vendor for the
development (to be discussed in Chapter 13).
The Ordinance can be conveniently summarized as the law to deal with how
the various sorts of information pertaining to the property and the transaction
6 Introduction
should be disclosed and presented in the various information channels. As its
Long Title proclaims:

[A]n Ordinance to regulate the provision of sales brochures and price lists
and the use of show flats in connection with the sale of residential properties
in respect of which neither an agreement for sale and purchase nor an
assignment has ever been entered into and made, to regulate the viewing of
such properties before sale, to regulate the publication of sale arrangements
and the execution of agreements for sale and purchase in connection with
such properties, to provide for registers of transactions in connection with
such properties, to regulate advertisements promoting the sale of such
properties, to provide for offences in connection with misrepresentations and
dissemination of false or misleading information, and to provide for incidental
and connected matters.6

Thus if information asymmetry is intentionally caused or recklessly ignored by

the vendor and/or the estate agents due to partial disclosure, inaccurate disclosure,
untimely disclosure or non-disclosure of the information requested under the
Ordinance, then the vendor or the estate agents may be committing various
offences of the Ordinance. In other words, the Ordinance aims to enhance
transparency by regulating the sales practices of the vendor and estate agents in
sale of first-hand residential properties.
Recent developments in consumer protection regulation have given rise to a
popular application of a legal term in modern consumer protection law that
specifically addresses the selling activities in B2C (business-to-consumer)
transactions: that of commercial practice, which is defined as any act, omission,
course of conduct, representation or commercial communication (including
advertising and marketing) by a trader, which is directly connected with the
promotion, sale or supply of a product to or from consumers, whether occurring
before, during or after a commercial transaction (if any) in relation to a product.
Accordingly, a consumer is redefined as any individual who in relation to a
commercial practice is acting for purposes which are outside of her business.7 The
UK Consumer Rights Act (CRA) 2015 further defines a customer as ‘an individual
acting for purposes that wholly or mainly outside that individual’s trade, business,
craft or profession’.8
The truth is, not all commercial practices are fair. The Consumer Protection
from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 provides that a commercial practice is
unfair if it materially distorts or is likely to materially distort the economic
behaviour of the average consumer with regard to the product, or if contravenes
the requirements of professional diligence, i.e., the standard of special skill and
care which a trader may reasonably be expected to exercise towards consumers
which is commensurate with either honest market practice or the general principle
of good faith in the trader’s field of activity.9
It is noteworthy that the Ordinance focuses exclusively on commercial practices
by the vendor (and on some occasions the estate agents as well) on information
 Introduction 7
disclosure and marketing behaviours (i.e., construction of show flats and release
of advertisements). In this regard, the implementation of the Ordinance in Hong
Kong could also represent the latest and quite substantial development in
promotional marketing law, a concept that has been discussed in consumer
protection law for some time, yet is not officially recognized as a dedicated body
of law (Circus 2011).
Misleading and aggressive commercial practices by either the vendor or the
estate agents occur in sales of both new and second-hand residential properties in
Hong Kong. However, the Ordinance only applies to the sale of first-hand
residential properties. To better understand the scope of the Ordinance, we need
to take a close look at the real estate market of Hong Kong.

The residential real estate market in Hong Kong

Types of housing in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is internationally renowned for its modern architecture and expansive
skyline. According to Emporis (a worldwide information provider who runs the
world’s largest and most comprehensive database of skyscrapers10 and high-rise
buildings11), Hong Kong outnumbers any other city in the world in terms of the
number of skyscrapers and high-rise buildings (Emporis 2016).12 On the land
mass of 1,104 km2, where only a portion of about 200 km2 flat land are estimated
to be available for construction,13 lies one of the world’s most vibrant and
expensive property markets.
Broadly speaking, three types of residential properties are sold and purchased
in the local real estate market: (i) private housing (or in Chinese, 私人樓宇);
(ii) the New Territories Exempted Houses (NTEHs, or in Chinese, 丁屋); (iii) flats
built by Hong Kong Housing Authority under the Home Ownership Scheme
(HOS Flats, or in Chinese 居屋); this category includes flats built by private
developers in agreement with the Housing Authority under the Private Sector
Participation Scheme.14
The following statistical table by Hong Kong Housing Authority shows that by
the year 2014, 45.7 per cent of the city’s population lived in private permanent
housing, 29.1 per cent in public rental housing, and 16.5 per cent in subsidized
housing (HKHA 2015).

Table 1.1 P
 opulation by Type of Housing, 2004, 2009 and 2014 by Hong Kong Housing
Authority (2015)
%
2004 2009 2014
Public permanent housing 49.0 47.1 45.7
Rental housing 30.5 29.2 29.1
Subsidised sale flats 18.5 17.9 16.5
Private permanent housing 50.2 52.2 53.8
Temporary housing 0.8 0.7 0.6
8 Introduction
Private housing
Private housing refers to housing estates developed by private developers. Main
sources of land supply for private housing include: (i) Government residential
sites sold to developers by the Lands Department; (ii) Railway sites under the
exclusive development right of the Mass Transit Railway Corporation; (iii) Urban
Renewal Authority (URA) sites sold to developers for redevelopment; and (iv)
privately owned sites with planning approval for residential use for which requisite
lease modifications have been executed with government (LC 2011).15
The first modern private housing estate in Hong Kong – The Mei Foo Sun
Chuen – was built between 1965 and 1978 in eight phases. The estate, believed to
be the largest residential estate in the world up till today, contains 99 residential
buildings accommodating 13,149 apartments. Since then, multi-block housing
complexes have been thriving across the territory, with the residential towers
growing all the more stately. One of the most notable trends is the tremendous
increase in the construction of large housing estates. The development usually
bears what could be best described as a birthday cake structure, where a number
of residential towers erect atop a large multi-storey podium that contains
recreational facilities including shopping malls, car-parks, clubhouses and
restaurants. In some of these large-scale complex projects, a line of independent
houses is built.16 There are also developments in the New Territories which consist
purely of independent houses.17
With few exceptions, the lots sold to developers by private landlords or by the
Urban Renewal Authority are piecemeal land in the crowded parts of Hong Kong
and Kowloon. This is also the case for most new developments in the mountainous
parts on the Hong Kong Island. The lot is not usually large enough for housing
complexes with multiple residential buildings; instead, a single-block high-rise
tower will be built upon, usually with a car-park in the foundation and a clubhouse
located either on the ground or top floor of the development.

New Territories Exempted Houses

New Territories Exempted Houses (NTEHs) are village houses built within the
boundaries of a list of 642 villages in the New Territories. When the Buildings
Ordinance (Cap 123) was extended to the New Territories in 1961, the custom
that an indigenous male could build in his village a small house for himself or
his son upon marriage was upheld. The erection of a house is exempted for
building approval provided certain conditions are met (Merry 2011a). One of
the conditions is the dimension of the building. The house when constructed
should not be more than three floors and should not exceed 27 feet (or 8.23
metres) in height; its roofed-over area should not exceed 700 square feet (or
65.03 square metres).18 Starting from December 1972, the government began to
administrate the small house grant via a Small House Policy: every indigenous
male villager over 18 years old and who is descended through the male line of a
resident in 1898 in one of the 642 listed villages in the New Territories is entitled
 Introduction 9
to a small house grant of 700 square-foot plot of building land by way of
application for a free building licence to build a small house on his own land at
nil premium, or a private treaty grant of government land, if available, at a
concessionary premium (LC 2006). New Territories (NT) Exempted Houses are
addressed as specified NT development in the Ordinance: a development if a
certificate of exemption has been issued under section 5(a) of the Buildings
Ordinance (Application to the New Territories) Ordinance in respect of building
works for every building in the development.19
To prevent the abuse of the scheme by villagers from cashing in on their
eligibility for the small house grants, most New Territories Exempted Houses are
granted under a three-year to five-year moratorium on the removal of restriction
on alienation in case of a resale of the house to an outsider. ‘Alienation’ refers to
the sale of the house by the grantee to an outsider or a non-indigenous villager
within the operative period of the restriction: the grantee has to pay the land
premium up to the difference between the market value of the lot at the time of
application to remove the alienation and the premium, if any, paid at the time of
grant (AC 2002). Hence New Territories Exempted Houses can be purchased and
sold in the open market after the restrictive period or after paying off the land
premium. In fact, estates of modern independent houses have been built on
contiguous village lots assembled by developers, who recruited indigenous males,
assisted them to apply for a permission to build on privately owned village land
registered in their name (beneficially owned by the entrepreneur) or for
concessionary grants of land, then built the house and sold to third parties for
benefits. In these cases, the land premiums are ultimately paid by the purchasers
(Merry 2011b).

HOS flats
Under the Home Ownership Scheme (HOS), the Hong Kong Housing Authority
develops and sells HOS flats at a concessionary price on behalf of the government
to a specific group of citizens known as green form and white form applicants.20
Within five years from the date of purchase, purchasers of HOS flats can only
resell the flats to public housing tenants or Green Form Certificate holders.21 The
resale of HOS flats in the open market is subject to statutory alienation restrictions
including a payment of premium to the Hong Kong Housing Authority.22 These
restrictions separate the HOS secondary market from the rest of second-hand
housing market.
The Scheme was suspended in the first decade of the millennium. In his Policy
Address 2011–12, the then Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam Kuen23 announced
a new policy for resumption of the Home Ownership Scheme. Under the new
policy the government plans to provide more than 17,000 flats over four years
from 2016–17 onwards, with an annual production of between 2,500 and 6,500
flats (Tsang 2011).
10 Introduction
An uncompleted flat and a presale
Having identified the main sectors in the local residential real estate market, we
come to one fascinating phenomenon, the presence of which has been seen in
sales of all types of first-hand residential properties in the region. From apartments
developed by private developers to HOS units by the Housing Authority and in
some cases the commercialized NTEHs in the listed villages in the New Territories,
a sale of flats can and does usually start before the construction of the building is
completed. To a large extent, flats in Hong Kong are sold off-plan.
Generally speaking, an uncompleted flat is a flat, at the time of execution of the
agreement for sale and purchase, the construction of which is uncompleted either
physically or from the point of law. For flats under the Consent Scheme, it refers
to flats to which a certificate of compliance or consent to assign has not yet been
granted by the Director of Lands; for flats under the Non-Consent Scheme, a flat
is regarded as uncompleted if the occupation permit is yet to be issued by the
Building Authority under section 21(2) of the Buildings Ordinance (THB 2011).
In the case of an HOS flat, the completion certificate has yet to be issued by the
Director of Housing (LRC 1995). Since NTEHs are exempted from the application
of the Buildings Ordinance under section 5 of the Buildings Ordinance
(Application to the New Territories) Ordinance (Cap 121), an uncompleted
NTEH flat may refer to those the agreement for sale and purchase has been
executed before completion of the construction of the house.
The Ordinance defines an uncompleted development by describing what it is
not – a completed development. According to the Ordinance, a development is a
completed development if the occupation permit has been issued in respect of
every building in the development; and in the case of a specified New Territories
development, a no-objection letter has been issued by the Director of Lands in
respect of every building in the development or a certificate of compliance or
consent to assign has been issued by the Director of Lands in respect of the
development. And a development is an uncompleted development if it is not a
completed development.24 On the other hand, a completed development pending
compliance is not an uncompleted development: it is a development where an
occupation permit has been issued in respect of every building in the development
(completed) but the conditions of the land grant have not been complied with, so
the consent of the Director of Lands for any sale and purchase of residential
property has not been granted (pending compliance).25
A sale of an uncompleted flat is locally known as a presale. The sale takes place
before the subject of the sale, i.e., the residential unit, is physically constructed.
The Chinese word to describe the equitable interests created by the agreement for
sale and purchase – ‘樓花’ (lau fat; literally means the flower(s) out of the
developing estates) – best signifies that the contract is executed at an early stage
of the construction of the development. This qualifies an off-plan sale of land as
future goods. The practice of off-plan sales (and any subsequent re-sales before
the completion of the development) creates a future market sector within the real
estate market. The agreement for sale and purchase of uncompleted flats is what
 Introduction 11
is known as a real forward contract, which only creates equitable interests based
on the transaction price while the assignment of the legal interest is executed in
the future. Some studies suggest that presale of uncompleted properties at planning
or construction stage by developers has, essentially created a forward property
market (Lindholm, Gibler and Levainen 2006; Leung, Hui and Seabrooke 2007).
Purchasers of uncompleted flats may benefit from a price difference between
the contract price and the market price by the time of completion. Essentially, the
sale is a financial means to hedge against future price fluctuations. Developers can
secure the upfront capital for the construction and transfer the market risk of the
project during the construction period to the purchasers through passing the
equitable ownership of the presale properties to the purchasers (Lindholm, Gibler
and Levainen 2006; Leung, Hui and Seabrooke 2007). This may explain why
presale is a very popular and common practice in the region.
For example, in China, the practice of presale of commercial housing has already
been recognized and regulated by a number of national laws in addition to local
regulations: a presale under Chinese property law is a sale of commercial housing
prior to the completion of construction upon the payment of deposit or the contract
price by the purchaser to the developer under an agreement to deliver the property
on a specified date (Tang 2008).26 Predictably, it will be the dominating way
residential properties are sold for decades to come in Hong Kong and the mainland
China. It is also popular in Taiwan, Singapore and is becoming more common in
the real estate markets in London, Sydney, Toronto and New York City.
In general, information asymmetry represents a more serious issue in sales of
uncompleted flats than sales of completed flats. Information asymmetry specific
to sales of uncompleted flats may include the inaccurate size of the properties,
mismatch of fittings and finishes, default in middle of construction (Leung, Hui
and Seabrooke 2007).

First-hand residential properties

Residential property is defined under the Ordinance as any real property in the
development or the phase constituting a separate unit used, or intended to be used,
solely or principally for human habitation, excluding any premises used or
intended to be used solely or principally as a hotel or guesthouse as defined by
section 2(1) of the Hotel and Guesthouse Accommodation Ordinance (Cap 349).27
Section 6(3) further points out that a residential property under the Ordinance
includes, where the context permits, a residential property to be constructed.
Overall, the Ordinance applies to residential properties sold in both completed
and uncompleted development.
According to section 10, the development has to be situated in Hong Kong. As
a matter of fact, first-hand residential properties located overseas attract the
interests of local investors too: every so often there are road shows held by local
real estate agents to promote sales of first-hand residential properties in the UK,
Canada, the USA, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, etc. The sales
practices are not subject to the regulation of the Ordinance even though the
12 Introduction
promotion takes place in Hong Kong. By the same token, the Ordinance does not
apply to promotional activities taken place in Hong Kong or promotional materials
circulated in Hong Kong for first-hand residential properties located in mainland
China.
A few exceptions for developments situated in Hong Kong are recognized to
exclude the application of the Ordinance: the first one is where the development
is a completed development and at least 95 per cent of the number of the residential
properties in the development have been held under a tenancy (other than a
government lease) for a continuous period of at least 36 months or for several
periods that in the aggregate equal at least 36 months since the issue of occupation
permit (or the issue of a certificate of compliance or consent to assign in case of a
specified New Territories development).28
Probably unexpected to the public and the vendor itself, transactions of a
couple of flats in 2014 in a 20-year-old development named Full Art Court firstly
completed in 1998 triggered the very first prosecution act after the commencement
of the Ordinance by the Department of Justice upon the reference of SRPA in
January 2016 (Mingpao 2016). The development consists of 35 residential units of
around 200 sq. ft. Eight units were sold before the commencement of the
Ordinance. The remaining 27 units remained unsold and unleased until 2014,
where the vendor sold some of the units in a very low profile manner (HKET
2016; AD 2016a; Mingpao 2016). The Ordinance was in full effect then and is
therefore applicable to the sale of the units in the development, as exception is
given only to completed development where 95 per cent of the number of
residential properties were held under a tenancy for a continuous period of at least
36 months. The vendor did not realize that the sale was subject to the regulation
of the Ordinance and did not prepare sales brochure and price lists in the way
requested by the Ordinance. The verdict was handed down on 3 August 2016 in
the Kwun Tong District Magistrate, where the judge held that the vendor had
violated 19 offences of the Ordinance in selling the residential units in Full Art
Court and was liable for a fine of HK$720,000 (AD 2016b).29

Conclusion
This book will discuss regulation on information asymmetry for better consumer
protection in the context of sale of first-hand residential properties in Hong Kong.
It is the very first book that provides a comprehensive analysis on the effectiveness
of Hong Kong’s leading transparency-oriented regulatory regime based on the
Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Ordinance. Major rules of the
Ordinance are individually analysed and assessed of its effectiveness in their
operation since the commencement of the Ordinance in 2013. Meanwhile, the
discussion will offer key insights and practical solutions for exploring and
addressing information asymmetry and property misdescription issues in the real
estate market in Hong Kong.
It is almost impossible to thoroughly explain the rationale behind the making of
every major rule in the Ordinance without tracing the emergence and development
 Introduction 13
of these rules in the time of the Consent Scheme (since 1969). It is equally difficult
to comprehend the significance of the new regulatory framework centred on the
Ordinance without looking at its evolution over the past 60 years along with the
rapid development of Hong Kong’s first-hand real estate market.
This brings us to Kowloon in 1954, discussed in the following chapter.

Notes
1 www.heritage.org/index/country/hongkong
2 It should be added here that enhancing transparency does not always require the
compromise of business freedom. Many believe that transparency is a prerequisite of a
free and efficient market. The smooth operation of the Ordinance after its commencement
in 2013 may be a good example of how regulator-facilitated transparency could
substantially improve the efficiency of real estate markets.
3 www.investopedia.com/terms/t/transparency.asp
4 www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1996/
5 www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2001/press.html
6 Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Ordinance, A2291.
7 Regulation 2, Part 1, The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.
8 Section 2(3), the UK Consumer Rights Act (CRA) 2015. For a more detailed analysis
on the implication of the latest UK legislation in the construction industry, see Philip
Britton, Adjudication and the ‘Residential Occupier Exception’: Time for a Rethink?,
the revised edition of the joint first prize entry in the Hudson Prize Essay Competition
2014, the Society of Construction Law, May 2015.
9 Regulation 2 and 3, Part 1, The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations
2008.
10 A ‘skyscraper’ is defined by Emporis as a multi-story building whose architectural
height is at least 100 metres. www.emporis.com/building/standard/75/skyscraper. ©
Emporis, March, 2016.
11 A ‘high-rise building’ is defined by Emporis as a structure whose architectural height
is between 35 and 100 metres. A structure is automatically listed as a high-rise when it
has a minimum of 12 floors. www.emporis.com/building/standard/3/high-rise-building
© Emporis, March 2016.
12 Hong Kong has 1,294 skyscrapers according to Emporis: www.emporis.com/statistics/
most-skyscrapers. © Emporis, March 2016.
13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong.
14 Apart from these three, a number of apartments in some public rental estates (公屋)
were sold to tenants in the 1980s under the Flat-for-Sale Scheme by the Hong Kong
Housing Society and under the Tenants Purchase Scheme by Hong Kong Housing
Authority from early 1998 to the end of 2006. Plus, the Hong Kong Housing Society
also built 13 estates of around a total 12,000 units for sale under the Sandwich Class
Housing Scheme to lower-middle or middle-income residents. Those units are tradable
only after the alienation restriction period and therefore constitute a tiny minority in the
market.
15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mei_Foo_Sun_Chuen
16 For example, the development Uptown in Hung Shiu Kiu consists of 734 flats, including
37 independent houses.
17 An example: the Seasons Monarch in Kam Tin.
18 Schedule to Buildings Ordinance (Application to the New Territories) Ordinance, (Cap
121).
19 Section 5, Part 1, Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Ordinance, A2309.
14 Introduction
20 For the definition of a green form applicant and a white form applicant, see www.
housingauthority.gov.hk/en/residential/shos/surplushosflats/definition/0,,,00.html
21 Hong Kong Housing Authority: Eligibility for Purchasing a Flat in the HOS Secondary
Market, www.housingauthority.gov.hk/en/residential/hossecondarymarket/eligibility2/
0,,,00.html
22 A premium must be paid by owners to the Housing Authority for removal of the
alienation restrictions before the flat can be let, sold or assigned in the open market: see
Schedule to the Housing Ordinance (Cap 283).
23 Doctor of Laws honoris causa, the University of Hong Kong, 2005.
24 Section 4(1), Part 1, Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Ordinance, A2305-2307.
Similarly, a phase of a development is a completed phase of the development if an
occupation permit has been issued in respect of every building in the phase; and it will
be an uncompleted phase of the development if it is not a completed phase of the
development.
25 Ibid., section 4(2), A2307.
26 ‘A presale is a sale of commercial housing prior to the completion of construction upon
the payment of deposit or the contract price by the purchaser to the developer under an
agreement to deliver the property on a specified date. The birth place of presale is Hong
Kong. Presale has been widely adopted by developers ever since it was introduced to
the mainland (since the 1990s), which has dominated the market of commercial housing
in China.’ See Tang Lie Ying, A Study on Mortgage-related Issues in Sale of Commercial
Residential Properties, Law Press (China), 2008, page 41. ‘所謂商品房預售，是指房
地產開發企業將正在建設尚未竣工的商品房預先出售給買受人，由買受人支付
定金或者商品房價款，雙方約定在未來確定的日期，由預售方交付建成的房屋
給買受人的法律行為。’商品住房預售，源於香港。自賣 ‘樓花’飄入內地之
後，風行各地，商品房預售已成為與商品房現售並存的房屋銷售的兩種方式之
一，並且，已經在商品房銷售中佔據主導地位。’ 唐烈英，《商品住房買賣貸款
按揭法律問題研究》，法律出版社，2008，第41頁。
27 Section 6, The Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Ordinance, A2309-2311.
28 Ibid., Section 10(3)(4).
29 Case No.: KTS21568-572、595-608/15.

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para. 2.4, 15 October 2002, p.3.
AD (2016a) ‘富雅閣律師：違規屬不幸’, 3 June 2016, Apple Daily, http://hk.apple.
nextmedia.com/financeestate/art/20160603/19638840
AD (2016b) ‘同珍富雅閣違規罪名成立 罰款72萬’, 3 August 2016, Apple Daily, http://
hk.apple.nextmedia.com/realtime/finance/20160803/55447446
Britton, P (2015) Adjudication and the ‘Residential Occupier Exception’: Time for a
Rethink?, the revised edition of the joint first prize entry in the Hudson Prize Essay
Competition 2014, the Society of Construction Law, www.scl.org.uk
CC (1991) A Study on the Disclosure of Information to Prospective Purchasers of
Uncompleted Unit, October 1991, Consumer Council, Hong Kong.
CC (2014) Study on the Sales of First-hand Residential Properties, p. 1, 11 November
2014, Consumer Council, www.consumer.org.hk/ws_en/competition_issues/reports/
20141111.html.
Chan, H.S., Chan, Y.K., Cheng, W.S., and Sze, K.W. (2015) Regulating the Sale of First-
hand Residential Properties in Hong Kong: a Study of Policy and Administrative
Dynamics, Capstone project report submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of
 Introduction 15
the Master of Public Administration, Department of Politics and Public Administration,
The University of Hong Kong, pp. 46–48.
Chau K.W., Wong, S.K. and Yiu, C.Y. (2003) Price Discovery Function of Forward
Contracts in The Real Estate Market: An Empirical Test, Journal of Financial
Management of Property and Construction, 8(3), pp.129–137.
Churchwell, C. (2003) Corporate Transparency Improves for Foreign Firms in US Markets,
Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Series, http://hbswk.edu/item/3489.
html, 26 May.
Circus, P. (2011) Promotional Marketing Law: A Practical Guide, 6th Edition, Bloomsbury
Professional, p. 1.
Fan, C.S. (2005) The Consent Scheme in Hong Kong: Its Evolution and Evaluation – Home
Purchaser Behaviour in Housing Society’s Property Transactions Before and After the
Asian Financial Crisis, Ph.D Thesis, Department of Real Estate and Construction,
Faculty of Architecture, the University of Hong Kong, September 2005, pp. 6–71.
Goo, S. H. (2010) Regulation of Sale of Off-the-plan Property, The Conveyancer and
Property Lawyer, Issue 2, 2010, pp. 129–131.
Granados, N, Gupta, A. and Kauffman, R. (2005) Transparency Strategy in Internet-Based
Selling, Advances in the Economics of Information Systems, pp. 80–112.
Hagel III, J. and Brown, J.B. (2014) How to Deepen Customer Loyalty: Be Transparent,
Fortunate Magazine, 2 April 2014.
HKET (2016) 富雅閣涉違規賣樓 表證成立, 3 June 2016, Hong Kong Economics Times.
HKHA (2015) Housing in Figures 2015, Hong Kong Housing Authority 2015.
Lai, R.N., Wang, K. and Zhou, Y. (2004) Sale before Completion of Development: Pricing
and Strategy, Real Estate Economics, 32(2), pp. 329–357.
LC (2006) Background Brief on Processing of Small House Applications and Review of
Small House Policy, CB(1)986/05-06(01), Legislative Council, 28 February 2006. For
definitions of ‘indigenous villager’, ‘recognised village’ and ‘small house grant’, see
www.landsd.gov.hk/en/legco/house.htm
LC (2011) Private Housing Land Supply, Following is a question by the Hon Albert Chan
Wai-yip and a written reply by the Secretary for Development Mrs Carrie Lam in the
Legislative Council today, Legislative Council, 9 March 2011.
LC (2013) Background brief on ‘Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Ordinance and
the Sales of First-hand Residential Properties Authority’ prepared by the Legislative
Council Secretariat, 2 July 2013, LC Paper No. CB(1)1391/12-13(03), Panel on
Housing, Legislative Council. www.legco.gov.hk/yr12-13/english/panels/hg/papers/
hg0702cb1-1391-3-e.pdf
Lee, A. and Goo, S. H. (2008) The Sale and Purchase of Uncompleted Flats in Hong Kong,
The International Conference The Judicial Reform of Macau in the Context of
Globalization, the Faculty of Law, the University of Macau, p. 3.
Leung, B., Hui, E. and Seabrooke, B. (2007) Asymmetric Information in the Hong Kong
Forward Property Market, International Journal of Strategic Property Management,
November 2007, pp.92.
Lin, D (2012) The New Rules for Sales of Uncompleted Flats, Law Lectures for
Practitioners 2010, Cheng, ML., Jen, J & Young, JYK (Eds.), Hong Kong Law Journal
Ltd & Faculty of Law, the University of Hong Kong.
Lindholm, A.L., Gibler, K.M. and Levainen, K.I. (2006) Modeling the Value-adding
Attributes of Real Estate to the Wealth Maximization of the Firms, Journal of Real
Estate Research, 28(4), pp. 445–475.
16 Introduction
LRC (1995) Reports on Descriptions of Flats on Sale, The Law Reform Commission of
Hong Kong April 1995, p. 5.
Merry, M. (2008) Protection of Purchasers of Uncompleted Residential Flats – The Hong
Kong Experience, HKU-NUS-SMU Symposium Paper, Singapore, November 2008.
Merry, M. (2011a) Lessons of the Illegal Structures Controversy, Law Lectures for
Practitioners 2011.
Merry, M. (2011b) Land in New Territories, Land Law III Lecture No. 7, The University of
Hong Kong, 18 November 2011, p. 7.
Miller, T. and Kim, A.B. (2016) 2016 Index of Economic Freedom, The Heritage
Foundation, 2006.
Mingpao (2016) 銷監局首控發展商 富雅閣涉19宗罪, 30 January, 2016, http://news.
mingpao.com/pns/dailynews/web_tc/article/20160130/s00004/1454089575168
Schnackenberg, A. (2009) Measuring Transparency: Towards a Greater Understanding of
Systemic Transparency and Accountability, Department of Organizational Behavior
Weatherhead School of Management Case Western Reserve University, 2 September
2009.
Schwarcz, D. (2014) Transparently Opaque: Understanding the Lack of Transparency in
Insurance Consumer Protection, 61UCLA L. REV.394 (2014).
Starke, G. (2016) What’s in a Name: Transparency, Innoq blog, web log post, 18 May
2016, www.innoq.com/en/blog/whats-in-a-name-transparency/
Stiglitz, J.E. (2001) Information and the Change in the Paradigm in Economics, Prize
Lecture, 8 December 2001.
SRPA (2013) Vision, Mission and Values, The Sales of First-hand Residential Properties
Authorities, 2013, www.srpa.gov.hk/en/vision-n-mission.html
Tang, L.Y. (2008) A Study on Mortgage-Related Issues in Sale of Commercial Residential
Properties, Law Press (China), 2008, p. 41.
THB (2011) Public Consultation on the Proposed Legislation to Regulate the Sale of
First-hand Residential Properties, The Transport and Housing Bureau, November 2011,
para. 9, p. 4.
Tsang, D. (2011) From Strength to Strength, Policy Address 2011-12, 24 October 2011,
pp. 22–25.
2 The way to legislation

Introduction
Before the commencement of the Residential Properties (First-hand Sales)
Ordinance (the Ordinance) in 2013, the sale of first-hand uncompleted residential
properties in Hong Kong was mainly regulated under two Schemes: the Consent
Scheme administrated by the Lands Department and the Non-Consent Scheme
administrated by the Law Society of Hong Kong.
The contractual basis for the operation of the Consent Scheme is a clause on
restriction on alienation (see Chapter 1) inserted by the government in the land
grant. The Consent Scheme applies wherever a development is being erected on a
parcel of land subject to a restriction on alienation prior to compliance with all the
conditions in the land grant governing the land and the registered land owner
wants to sell any units in the development before it is complete; besides first-hand
sales of residential properties in a development standing on newly granted
government leases, the Consent Scheme applies to sales of residential properties
where an exclusion order made under the Landlord and Tenant (Consolidation)
Ordinance (Cap 7) contains clauses prohibiting owners from entering into
agreements for the sale of uncompleted units without the prior consent of the
Director of Lands (Lands D 2016).
Where there are no lease conditions requiring the consent of the Director of Lands
to initiate the sale, for example developments on plots of land purchased from
previous government leases, the practice of presale is administrated by the Law
Society of Hong Kong under the Non-Consent Scheme.1 The Non-Consent Scheme
does not operate directly on developers; instead it imposes professional obligations
to the solicitors acting for developers to comply with Rule 5C of the Solicitors
(Practice) Rules and other Practice Directions, which includes the adoption of a
standard form of agreement for sale and purchase mirroring the one used in the
Consent Scheme. The Lands Department (2016) revised the standard form of
the agreement for sale and purchase for the Consent Scheme in June 2016 after the
enactment of the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Ordinance (Cap 623).
Under the Consent Scheme, a developer cannot sell first-hand residential
properties in advance of the completion of the development unless it obtains the
consent of the Director of Lands (Lands D 1999a). The consent is granted based
18 The way to legislation
on the developer’s commitment to comply a variety of conditions set out in a
number of Circular Memoranda issued by the Legal Advisory and Conveyancing
Office (LACO, known as the Land Office before 1993).2 The consent granted by
the Director of Lands is confined to the entering of preliminary agreements for
sale and purchase (PASP) and agreements for sale and purchase (ASP) only;
developers need to apply for ‘consent to assign’ when the development is
completed.
As far as the sale of private properties is concerned, the implementation of the
Consent Scheme is complemented by the self-regulation of the Real Estate
Developers Association of Hong Kong (REDA). Established in the year 1965
under the chairmanship of Dr Henry Fok,3 REDA’s members include all the major
developers in Hong Kong. Before 2013, REDA used to issue, from time to time,
guidelines on Sales Descriptions of Uncompleted Residential Properties for the
reference of its members. These guidelines were voluntary measures applied to
member developers, which developers without REDA membership are encouraged
to follow (Lands D 1999b). For quite a long time the guidelines were published
only on the website of the Estate Agents Authority for public viewing,4 as REDA
did not establish its own website until September 2011.5 It has been observed that
REDA’s regulation had clear advantages of flexibility in rule making, expertise
and sensitivity to regulatory cost, yet the weakness of this form of industrial self-
regulation was that it had little public or governmental involvement, and if there
is close connection or friendly relation between REDA and its member developers
it may not necessarily be impartial (Goo 2010).
The Consent Scheme and the Non-Consent Scheme remain operative upon the
commencement of the Ordinance in 2013, but measures and rules regarding the
design and contents of sales brochures, price lists, advertisements and show flats
have been replaced by the Ordinance.6
What happened to the operation of the Consent Scheme that eventually gave
rise to the enactment of the Ordinance in 2013 to take over some of its major
responsibilities? An account of the development of the first-hand real estate
market in Hong Kong is helpful for an understanding of the historical background
against which this piece of legislation stepped into the regulatory regime.

1961–1991: The early development of the Consent Scheme

The emergence of pre-sale

Back in the 1940s, private residential properties were only affordable by the
wealthy class of the society. To the general public, the market was basically
inaccessible due to the large amount of money needed to be advanced immediately
to the vendor by the purchaser upon the signing of the contract. The status quo
was about to change with the invention of a revolutionary payment method said to
be introduced first by Dr Henry Fok Ying Tung in the 1950s. Legend had it that
Dr Fok started to discuss the idea of soliciting purchasers and selling residential
properties in instalments prior to the construction of the development somewhere
 The way to legislation 19
between 1953 and 1954 (Leng 2005). In promoting the residential units within the
building that his company was about to construct on Kowloon Marine Lot No. 39,
Dr Fok came up with a revolutionary method of payment under which purchasers
would pay a portion of the overall price as deposits prior to the construction of the
building, then pay off the balance in instalments throughout the construction
period. The great flexibility provided by the payment method made the apartments
suddenly affordable to a much larger class of citizens. At the same time, money
collected from the advanced payment could be used in the construction of the
development. The idea was experimented in the sale of a residential building on
the Public Square Street in Yau Ma Tei.7
The sale was believed to be the first off-plan sale, in Hong Kong but also in the
world; it set up the precedent of sale of first-hand real estate property in Hong
Kong that adopted a pay-by-instalment payment method (Leng 2005). The trial
turned out to be a massive success in every aspect. The response to the sale was
overwhelming. Within days all the units were sold out, despite the fact that the
building was still under construction. The innovation soon led to an expansive
development of the business within one year, Dr Fok’s company erected more
than one hundred buildings equating to a total of over six hundred floors on the
Public Square Street, and sold flats totalling approximately 500,000 square feet.
And perhaps it was on account of this innovation that Dr Fok grew into a legendary
figure so overwhelming, that people in Hong Kong, Macau and the Mainland have
never since ceased to write and read about his life. The story of how Dr Fok
invented off-plan sales (or in Chinese, 賣樓花) is still being heard of today. As
Malcolm Merry (2008) accounted:

[B]y the 1950s… entrepreneurs offered the public the chance to purchase flats
which were only at the planning stage. They took deposits and periodic
payments towards the price which they used to buy the land and construct the
building. Lawyers devised a means by which flats could be owned. Purchasers
had the benefit of paying for their flats over time (banks would not lend to
ordinary people for property purchase then), at a price free of future
fluctuations and which might be discounted.

The successful experience in Yau Ma Tei served as a catalyst that resulted in a

surging residential real estate market. The payment method was soon adopted by
other developers and a wave of construction took place in the city. The local real
estate market was vitalized by the cash flowing from citizens from all walks of the
society who could not have afforded residential properties but for Dr Fok’s
innovation.8 Probably beyond Dr Fok’s expectation, his little experiment on the
sale of uncompleted flats initiated the transformation of Hong Kong from a fishing
village in the 1850s to the world’s most expensive property market. Later, when a
market-oriented economy was resumed (starting from 1979) in mainland China
under Deng Xiaoping’s administration, the ‘Hong Kong Mode’, i.e., the practice
of sale-prior-to-completion, soon gained its popularity in mainland China after the
economy took off in the early 1990s (Tang 2008).
20 The way to legislation
The beginning of the Consent Scheme
From the outset, presales as novel economic activities were in general unregulated
by the government (Fan 2005).9 But there was very high degree of risk that was
inherent in the practice of pre-sale. This could include the risk of non-delivery or
delayed delivery; the risk of fraud or insolvency of the developer or its building
contractors; the risk of competing interests if the developer mortgaged the land to
raise funds for other business (Merry 2008). Just a few years after the historic
breakthrough in Yau Ma Tei, questionable practices associated with presales
emerged. The year 1961 saw the first incident where one developer, the Peony
House West Block Limited, got into a serious financial crisis before completing
the development. In the end, the company was not able to continue the building
before it went into liquidation. A total of 299 purchasers had to pay a further 30
per cent of the original purchase price just to get the building completed (Fan
2005). This incident was the first ever event in the history of sales of uncompleted
flats that signalled the necessity for governmental regulation. The then British
Hong Kong government started to discuss whether presales should be prohibited
by law.
Eventually, the government gave up the idea of banning presales; instead, they
saw from the Peony House West Block Limited incident the need to monitor the
practice. As Merry (2008) recalled, in terms of the form of regulation, the British
Hong Kong government opted for using administrative means over legislation and
self-regulation. The initial form of government control was to insert a restrictive
clause on alienation of land prior to the consent of the government in the Conditions
of Lands Grant. This was the underlying principle of the Consent Scheme first
introduced on 20 December 1961. The government required that a ‘letter of
consent’ be issued by the Land Officer before any presales could take place. The
issue of the ‘Letter of Consent’ was primarily concerned with the financial
undertaking of developers to complete the property and was dependent on the
proportion of money invested in the land purchase and construction by the time of
application.
Merry (2008) described the essence of the Consent Scheme as follows:

The non-statutory regime of control operates through the medium of a

restrictive covenant in the government grant and the need of the developer for
consent from the Lands Department (the government land authority) to
relaxation of that covenant to the extent of entering into agreements for the
advanced sale of units in the proposed development and for assigning those
units once they have been finished.

The year 1964 marked the first reform of the Consent Scheme. The Land Office
Circular Memorandum No. 19 inserted certain standard clauses into the agreement
for sale and purchase; it also introduced two standard forms of ‘statutory
declaration’ for developers and their solicitors. The developer had to declare the
financial ability and the method of financing with an audited financial statement or
 The way to legislation 21
a balance sheet which suggested that the net asset of the developer exceeded the
cost of the development. The solicitor had to declare that the lease concerned had
to have at least ten years to run from the estimated date of building completion and
in the case the lease had less than ten years to run, a renewal agreement had been
ascertained; the building plans had been approved by the Buildings Department;
the property was free from encumbrances, and the required terms were included
in the agreement for sale and purchase (RGD 1964).
The reform was not well received by developers. Non-compliance of the new
requirements occurred in sales by a number of developers. According to Fan
(2005), the reasons included the belief that the new system imposed too many
liabilities on developers and their solicitors; developers were unwilling to bear the
liabilities; and practically it was impossible for them to disclose all details at the
time of submission. The requirement on statutory declaration was implemented
on a discounted basis against developers in the sales of uncompleted flats for quite
a long time after 1965.
In 1979, statutory declarations were reintroduced to the Consent Scheme,
together with the adoption of a standard agreement for sale and purchase. But
from that time onwards the requirement of statutory declaration only applies to
solicitors.
Today, the function of the statutory declaration by solicitors in specified form
includes verification of facts and exhibition of documents from the architect’s
certificate, the agreement for sale and purchase and the deed of mutual covenants.
The declaration needs to be registered at the Land Registry prior to the start of the
presale. In addition, the solicitor needs to declare that the developer has complied
with the requirements in relevant LACO Circular Memoranda (LSHK 2004). The
last part of the statutory declaration, i.e., the compliance of relevant LACO
Circular Memoranda, was first added in February 1991 with the issue of the Land
Office Circular Memorandum No. 101 (RGD 1991). The significance of the
declaration is to fortify compliance with the Consent Scheme through the
reputation and professional status of the solicitor, which, once approved, would
have to be registered at the Land Registry prior to the making of the first sale
(Merry 2008).

1991–2012: The new direction

The emergence of a new focus

As observed by Sarah Nield (1990), before the Land Office Circular Memorandum
No. 101 came into effect, the only objective of the Consent Scheme was to ensure
that developers were financially able to complete the developments; this resulted
from the two types of inherent risks posed to off-plan purchasers: the buildings
may never be completed; or if completed, the conditions of the flats may differ
from what purchasers originally expected. Indeed, the operation of the Consent
Scheme before 1991 primarily concerned the financial capacity of the developers.
In other words, consent to presale would be granted to a developer if the
22 The way to legislation
government was satisfied with the financial status of the developer to complete the
construction of the respective development. Beyond that, no particular
consideration seemed to be given on the manner developers described the
properties in the sales literature.
The deficiency of the Consent Scheme caught the attention of the Consumer
Council as early as 1977, which in 1989 became a major concern to the Council.
The Council made a number of recommendations in its Report entitled ‘A Study
on the Disclosure of Information to Prospective Purchasers of Uncompleted Unit’
(CC 1991). The recommendations, most accepted by the government, formed a
brand new department of regulations in the Consent Scheme with the issue of
Land Office Circular Memorandum No. 101 in 1991. The issue of this memorandum
was undoubtedly a milestone for the Consent Scheme, for it is the first memorandum
in the history of the Scheme to demand mandatory disclosure of information about
the property for sale. It provided a list of items, the information of which had to be
included in the sales brochure and price lists, such as location plan, layout plan
drawn to scale, salient points of government lease, detailed plan of a typical floor,
schedule of flat size, fittings and finishes, anticipated completion date of the
building, salient points of the deed of mutual covenant, miscellaneous payments
upon delivery of unit, names of contractors and other authorized persons, price of
individual units, purchaser procedure, payment terms, responsibility for legal
fees, instalment payment methods and interest rates in case of a restricted choice
of mortgage, number of units available for sale. RGD (1991) entitled ‘minimum
information to be provided to prospective purchasers of uncompleted units’, the
lists represented the embryonic form of the regulatory regime.
From February 1991, solicitors needed to declare that developers had complied
with the requirements in the Circular Memorandum No. 101; developers needed
to attach copies of sales brochures to the Lands Office when applying for the
consent to presale. Fan (2005) remarked that, although the Land Office Circular
Memorandum No. 101 was subsequently amended by LACO Circular Memoranda
Nos. 4, 40, 40A, 40C and 54, the basic principles and standards remained intact.
The issue of Land Office Circular Memorandum No. 101 introduced a completely
new perspective into the Consent Scheme, i.e., consumer protection. For the first
time it directed the development of the Scheme to regulate disclosure of
information of the residential properties. This new direction has become the theme
of rounds of improvements of the Consent Scheme in the past two decades and the
golden thread throughout the evolution of the regulatory regime.

The 1995 Report on Description of Flats on Sale

Soon after the issue of Land Office Circular Memorandum No. 101, the Law
Reform Commission established a sub-committee under the chairmanship of Mr
Derek Roebuck in November 1992 to consider appropriate measures to tackle
misleading information and particulars in the sales literature. The study for the sub-
committee revolved around the question of ‘should the law governing the protection
of prospective purchasers and purchasers of uncompleted residential property in
 The way to legislation 23
relation to inadequate or misleading sales information or particulars be changed
and, if so, in what way?’, a term of reference decided by the then Acting Attorney
General and the then Acting Chief Justice (LRC 1995). The ‘Report on Description
of Flats on Sale’ was published after a period of deliberation lasting 29 months and
public consultation in 1995. The Report gave recommendations on measurement
of floor area, fittings and finishes, location and layout plans, date of completion,
charges levied on transfer of title to sub-purchasers, financing arrangements,
preliminary agreement for sale and purchase, right of inspection prior to completion
of transaction and defect liability period, deed of mutual covenant, conditions of
the land lease, prices and number of units for sale and internal sale, miscellaneous
information, availability of sales brochure, and enforcement.
These ground-breaking works provided for a workable framework to develop a
much more comprehensive regulatory system both in the context of and beyond
the Consent Scheme, which, 18 years after the publication of the Report, became
reality in April 2013. It should be highlighted that in Chapter 15 of the Report, the
Law Reform Commission had considered three possible means to enforce the
measures for protection of purchasers of uncompleted units, viz., self-regulation,
administrative measures and legislation; the Commission offered the view that
legislation was the most effective way to bring about the intended results and
ensure adherence to a uniform set of standards (LRC 1995).
Although eventually the Report did not lead to a proposal of legislation in the
1990s, its significance for the later development of the regulatory system can
never be overstated. Its influence started to become apparent in the later
development of the Scheme from the beginning of the millennia.

LACO Circular Memorandum No. 40

In May 1999, the Lands Department consolidated all the prevailing rules and
instructions in relation to sale of uncompleted flats in private residential
developments in LACO Circular Memorandum No. 40. The Memorandum
possesses all the details on the operation of the Scheme from documents to be
submitted with each application, to financial requirements, bank undertaking,
development progress, application procedure, statutory declaration, lease
approval, and most important, the consent terms. It made a distinction between
private sale and public sale; the latter was subject to tighter governmental control
on mandatory disclosure of information and conduct of sale (Lands D 1999).10
Although subsequently a number of provisions in the memorandum (including the
private-public-sale distinction) had been varied or abolished, this memorandum
remained as the principal memorandum that retained a comprehensive view of the
Consent Scheme before the Ordinance.

Sales Descriptions of Uncompleted Residential Properties Bill

The recommendations by the Law Reform Commission had inspired the draft of
a Sales Descriptions of Uncompleted Residential Properties Bill in April, 2000.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 CHAPTER XVIII

THE CAPITAL OF THE PUNJAB

"Hatee Aiah! Hatee aiah!"—"The elephant comes!" cried the children

running, and one small scamp danced in front and shouted, "Hatee kuta
machi bucha"—"The elephant is a dog bad beast," and fled to escape
consequences of such boldness. I was now seeing Lahore city from the back
of one of the Lieutenant-Governor's State elephants which had swelled with
pride the heart of Tambusami, my servant, when in all the bravery of scarlet
trappings it came to fetch me from the hotel. Tambusami's respect for
"Government" was almost sublime. He rarely showed the faintest interest in
shrines or temples, but invariably reflected every manifestation of official
interest in, or attention to, his master. On such occasions the whole strain of
his body seemed differently keyed, and on the back of that elephant he gave
himself the most amusing airs, tilting up his chin and appearing to bask in an
atmosphere of luxurious importance for all the world like a child playing at
chief minister to some Haroun al Raschid, who had thrown off disguise and
shown himself to the public in proper grandeur.

With me was a delightful Pundit Omaid Chand, Superintendent of the

Punjab Government Records, who accompanied me during my stay at
Lahore. "My native place," he told me, "was Saharanpur in the United
Provinces; but now I am a nationalized Punjabi because I have been here
fifty years since I was eight years old."

We entered the city by the Delhi Gate and filled the narrow street so that
there was consternation among the shopkeepers and joy among the children
all along our route. Elephants are no longer used so much as formerly, and at
Lahore even the Lieutenant-Governor only keeps two now instead of eight.

When we met a troop of buffaloes there was a mighty hubbub. The

shopkeepers squealed and jibbered much that I am sure was impolite as the
frightened beasts plunged and pressed upon their goods. Many of the taller
buildings with elaborately carved woodwork belonged to well-to-do
Mohammedans, who have their homes away from the city, and use such
houses in the intervals of business, and for friends of an evening. They do
not usually go home till after nine o'clock at night. We were, of course, on a
level with the projecting balconies and carved oriel windows. Here and there
awnings were stretched across the street between the opposite houses, and
once or twice we had to wait while these were hauled up to let us go by.
Passing through another gateway we halted before a beautiful mosque,
wondrous with exquisite tints of blue and green in the old glazed tiles that
were all about its front and minarets. Its elaborate inscriptions were in blue,
with yellow and green ornament on a white ground. Baked daily in the sun
for nigh three hundred years the beauty of this glazed inlay was only
enhanced by time, and well may it last unharmed through future centuries!
The narrow streets, in spite of all their charm, will be swept away as the
townsfolk gradually alter their standards and ideas, but the traveller of the
age to come should still find this fair mosque to please his eyes.

Out of the city at length we came to the now open space about the
crenelated walls and bastions of the fort, and the Badshahi Masjid with its
four old capless minars. Midway between the west gate of this mosque and
the walls of the Fort stands the graceful pavilion called the Baradari. The
stone is mostly red Agra sandstone, Jehangir's favourite building material,
recalling Kenilworth in colour, but the mosque has three domes of white
marble.

Descending once more to earth I walked all over the fort, with its Pearl
Mosque of white Jeypore marble (much, so much less fine than the Moti
Masjids of either Delhi or Agra) its white Nau Lakha, its Diwan-y-khas,
looking ready to tumble to pieces, though now in the restorer's hands, and its
Shish Mahal.

Near these last, to the right of the same quadrangle, is the armoury. In
Europe the traveller is often shown instruments of torture—rack or boot or
"maiden," and in England what village of tourist attractiveness is without
either stocks or pillory? In India, however, such relics are rare, and those
shown at the Lahore Armoury, including a machine for pulling off thieves'
fingers, invented by Dhuleep Singh, only remind one of the general absence
of such stepping stones to civilization.

There is a great variety among this choice collection of weapons, and

although it cannot compete with that of Turin, Valetta or Hertford House, it
would prove at least a valuable addition to any one of them. Here are
recalled the times of Ranjeet Singh, the one-eyed monarch, who had the
genius to gather under him European officers of such calibre as Avitabile,
Allard and Ventura. Here are cuirasses, imported by General Ventura for his
French legion of 8000 men, bearing on their fronts the Gallic cock with
laurels and standards on a star of steel, and beside them Sikh shields with
copper bosses. Here are swords from Iran, with ivory hilts and blades
engraved with mottoes calling on the help of "Ali." There are combination
swords and pistols, Afghan knives, old flint-lock and match-lock guns with
barrels damascened, old four-chambered match-lock revolver guns,
musquets (short carbines or blunderbusses) carried by the Gurcharahis, (Sikh
cavalry 4000 strong), tir kaman (bows and arrows), tarkash (quivers),
Abyssinian shotels made with a double curve and wielded with the point
downwards, Mahratta swords, farangs—straight swords adapted by the
Mahrattas from the Portuguese, Khandahs, those long Sikh swords made
broader near the point, a Persian mace of the time of Rustem—a gem for any
collection—tabai (battle-axes) gokru, the crowsfoot—caltrap of ancient
Europe for throwing down to stop cavalry, a Burmese Dha or Dhas, a fakir's
baraggan or short sword-stick leaning on which some "muni of the ages" has
sat in meditation in the jungle. There are Goorkha kukris and Hindoo Katars,
the iron-shod stick of a Chaukidar, a powder-flask of golden thread, back-
plates and breast-plates and helmets of steel and brass.

The armoury is certainly more interesting to-day than the Shish Mahal
opposite wherein, as in a certain chamber at Versailles, it is said that begums
and a man would shut themselves for weeks together. Here there is indeed no
armoury of love—is it because the weapons of that warfare were of a kind
inseparable from those who wielded them—the charms that vanished with
their owners? Or can it be that their enduring pattern has never been
improved upon, so that each blade and buckler of the past is still in full
demand for current wear?
 I went up to the roof of the Shish Mahal for the view of Ranjeet Singh's
tomb and the Badshahi mosque, and between its minarets towards the west
could see the silver band that is the Ravi River, and then before going back
to the elephant I looked at Ranjeet Singh's tomb on which certain bosses are
carved in the marble with curious significance. Eleven of these are grouped
round a large centre, and of the eleven four are for Ranees (who are married
women) and seven for concubines, while at two of the corners of the slab are
detached smaller bosses to commemorate a pair of pigeons burned in the
funeral pyre.

What a contrast, I thought, on returning to the spacious roads of the

modern town outside the city gates, between the new order and the old! On
arriving at Lahore the first thing that the stranger notices is the fortified
railway station, then a tank and an old mosque covered with green-glazed
tiles with others about it of bright peacock-blue; and then, as he drives from
the station in a gharry, through white dust, past quite handsome modern
buildings in pale red brick, comes the "Upper Mall," a perfect road with an
ideal lay-out for a modern town—wide and trim with electric-light standards
painted a clean grey on brick-edged grass strips which separate the centre
roadway from a riding track that, in its turn, runs parallel to a footway; while
on either side stretches a line of gardens. It is all as handsome as the
Boulevard Anspach at Brussels, and as different from the more lovable
streets in old Lahore as can well be imagined.

I had seen in front of the museum Zam Zammah, the old gun with a long
history which Rudyard Kipling played round as a boy long before Kim was
written, and had watched the urchin scrambling on its back when the
policeman was not looking. Having heard that the character of Mahbub Ali
of Kim—"known as one of the best horse-dealers in the Punjab"—was
drawn from a man named Wazir Khan (not that minister of Akhbar after
whom the Chauk of Wazir Khan is named, but an old horse-dealer who is
still alive), I took some trouble to inquire for him. The old man was on the
road, however, having gone to a horse-fair at Jhelum, but I found his son and
asked him to show me the old Sarai where his father used to sleep on his
visits to Lahore. This is called the Sarai of Mahomet Sultan and belongs to
the Maharajah of Kashmir. It is a wide quadrangle, about 60 yards square,
with round-arched cloisters on all sides; and the son of Wazir Khan showed
me, shut off between pillars, the place where his father used to sleep in the
old days. The shadows of a large shisham tree flickered over the broken
white plaster of the wall. There was a well in the centre, and near it was a
group of horses from Waziristan. Out through the gateway ("the Gate of the
Harpies who paint their eyes and trap the stranger") I could see the Lunda
Bazaar and a woman squatting on the edge of the footway washing her face
with soap. Near her was a tamasha wallah, a boy with a cage of green
parrots, and a Hindoo woman cooking chupatties over a fire of dung-cakes,
and from one of the houses there was singing in Pushtu.

I returned to the old gun and entered the building of the "wonder-house"
in front of which it stands.

The Mayo School of Industrial Art, which is attached to the Lahore

Museum, was founded to revive arts now half forgotten, and generally to
develop the Industrial Art of the Province. I went thoroughly over its various
departments, its schools of modelling and design, architecture, engineering,
wood-carving and carpentry, repoussé and blacksmith's work—and I do not
think the importance of this college, as an educational institution, could be
exaggerated. Its ambition to turn out a constant succession of the best
possible craftsmen, rather than theoretic students, makes it the best means
yet arrived at of moral and mental development inseparable to my thinking
from the purely utilitarian value of handicraft training. Among the students
were pointed out to me lads from distant villages and outlying districts, some
in receipt of Government stipends, others supported by District and
Municipal Boards and others again by Independent States. A well-regulated
boarding-house is connected with the school for the accommodation of such
pupils, a large proportion of whom find immediate employment on the
completion of their course at the school and so continually add to the
popularity of its training.

The energy, talent and success of Mr Percy Brown during the many years
in which he has developed and enlarged the scheme initiated under the late
Mr Lockwood Kipling, are beyond praise, and I only hope that his recent
translation to Calcutta may bring an extension to other provinces of India of
practical application of the same educational ideas.

The museum is justly proud of its Buddhist sculptures, the best of which
is one in black hornblende schiste (from the Yusafzai country near
Peshawar), of Buddha after his forty-nine days' fast. Carved with extreme
delicacy and refinement, this wonderful sculpture seems to carry one rather
to Renaissance Italy than the North-West Provinces. Who were they, these
sculptors? How much or how little were they identified with the people
whose gods they carved? Would Alexander of Macedon have had in his train
men of sufficient eminence in their craft to account for the apparent Western
influence?

One of the latest additions under Mr Brown's curatorship is a collection

of paintings and drawings of the Moghul Emperors and people of their
times, which includes many exquisite illuminations and old water-colour
drawings of extreme fineness and delicacy and yet full of character, design
and amazing distinction. Appreciation of such things since the days of their
production is only beginning to be re-awakened, and they are still
purchasable in India at such prices as the museum can afford. Mr Brown told
me that I was the first who had yet looked at this collection with enthusiasm
to justify his own in buying them, but "who knows the spelling of Du
Guesclin?" They are as wonderful as Holbein's drawings, their detail would
have enchanted Altdorfer, and their exquisite line might have delayed the
death of Aubrey Beardsley! Such are the Mullah Do Piaza, the picture of
Akhbar's jester and his thin Rosinante, or the beautiful drawing of Humayun,
Babar's son, out a-hunting.

India is a land which changes any sympathetic traveller to a set of strings

on which its spirit plays through all the working-hours. Every day is
crowded with new wonders, and no sooner does he sink to earth, as if fallen
from the hands of one player, than he is snatched up again and every fibre
wrung by some new loveliness he knew not of.

One afternoon I drove out with the pundit to Shaddra where Jehangir is
buried and Nour Jehan. We started to the west of the city on the high road to
Peshawar, past the Mohammedan cemetery and the Hindoo burning-ground,
outside which some women in white and yellow robes sat waiting while their
men-folk burned a body within.

In the time of Ranjeet Singh, the pundit told me, the river used to flow
past the Badshahi Masjid, a large red sandstone mosque, which we next
passed: but in India the rivers are not so constant as the stars in their courses.
 A little farther on we crossed the dry bed called the Ravi Nullah and
then, driving through the Ravi Forest, reached the bridge of boats that spans
the Ravi River at a little distance from the railway-bridge. A merry old Kuka
Sikh on a white donkey was waiting at the bridge toll-gate for someone from
whom to beg the money to cross. It is a long bridge and very narrow, so that
two vehicles cannot pass one another and a bullock-cart, which had just
started to cross from the opposite bank, seemed inclined to take an infinity of
time about it; but the Kuka Sikh was in no hurry, and when we had paid his
toll joked with the pundit to beguile the time. This boat-bridge has to be
dismantled in the rainy season, from June to August, when the river is
swollen.

We left the Peshawar road soon after crossing the bridge and presently
reached Shaddra and Jehangir's tomb, a large and elaborate affair with much
space about it and great entrance gateways and lines of narrow water tanks
in the gardens within. Dismounting from the gharry we walked over the
great open space of the Sarai and through the eastern gateway, with its
honeycomb vaulted ceiling and soft warm flower decoration on its pink
stucco-covered brick-work, to the water channels of the tomb garden, past
the central tank and on to the Mausoleum itself, an exquisite low building
with four tall minarets, half of white marble and half of the red Agra stone,
of which Jehangir was so fond.

We walked up the steps and crossing a pavement of badal stone entered

the inner chamber through an arch with a dado of old glazed inlay. Within, a
flat oil-lamp upon a metal stand, threw flickering light in a bright path upon
the marble floor. There was rich inlay of agate, cornelian and amethyst, the
ninety-nine names of God and the titles of Jehangir, all but the most
important title—that of husband of Nour Jehan. She is buried, the Queen
who ruled him and his people—only her own brother she could not save
from his wrath—about half a mile away and I was surprised to find the place
in a state of utter neglect. It is awkward to approach and I expect is rarely
visited.

When we reached it the sun was very low. A cow was stalled in one part
of the neglected tomb and, as I approached, a Mohammedan fakir, rising
from the ground to his full height, tall and thin, shook his hands at the sky
and cried in Persian—Al Mout! Al Mout! ("Everyone must die—everyone
must die!")

"But this is a stable," said the pundit, whose learning perhaps did not
include Bethlehem. It is true that the tomb was railed round, but the railings
were broken and the sturdy rogue of a fakir had settled himself comfortably
with his charpoy, his goat and his cow. His beard was grey and his unkempt
hair peeped out in tufts from his roughly-tied turban, once white and spotted
with dark blue. The things he continued to shout were curious, but the pundit
agreed with me it was mere wildness and no scheming for backsheesh that
prompted a reference to England. Waving his arms round and round he cried
—"The English will rule all over the world," and then—"One God to rule
over us all. He created Adam and Eve: bismillah heraai mornana heem la
ilia illillah."

I walked up some broken brick steps and passing through a series of low-
pointed arches, down on the other side of a low circular wall, I stood before
two tombs. The one nearest to me was that of Nour Jehan, who had been
called Rose of the Harem, Light of the World: its neighbour was that of her
adopted daughter.

The tombs are quite plain plaster-covered brick-work. In the outer

passages there remain some traces of painted ornament—but because she
had no children, and her stepson, Shah Jehan, was not on good terms with
her when she died, there is here no decoration, no inscription. Not for her
tomb are the ninety-nine names of God!

Through the arches on the farther side I could see the trunks of date
palms and old, old mango trees in the Begumpura, a garden Nour Jehan had
loved. I went underground to the crypt-like chamber below the tomb, and
with the help of matches made out that there was nothing upon the floor—
only in the ceiling one inset space corresponding to the cenotaph above. The
pundit thought the body was probably very deep in the ground—I know not.

When we came out above ground the last of daylight was making golden
play among the palms and mango trees. They were in flower—and next June
fruit would be upon them.
 CHAPTER XIX

AT THE COURT OF HIS HIGHNESS THE RAJAH

OF NABHA

His Highness the Rajah of Nabha is a noble old Sikh chieftain,

distinguished among the native rulers of India, although his territory, one of
the Phulkian States, is but small. Through the kindness of the Punjab
Government and of His Highness, I was given an opportunity of visiting the
little court.
 HIS HIGHNESS THE RAJAH OF NABHA.

To reach Nabha, my train from Lahore was the Bombay mail, and I have
rarely seen greater confusion at any railway station than reigned upon its
arrival. Every class of carriage was already full, yet there were a number of
first-class passengers waiting with title to berths booked in advance as well
as second and third-class ticket-holders. The train was already of the
maximum size permitted and, after half an hour's uncertainty, a third-class
carriage was actually emptied of its fifty or more occupants, taken off the
train and replaced by an empty first-class coach. Few more striking instances
could be found of purse privilege. It would correspond in England with the
dumping on a Crewe platform of the third-class passengers by the Scotch
express from Euston to make room for first-class passengers waiting for the
train at Crewe. It was not a case of native and foreign, or English and
Oriental,—for plenty of native gentlemen travel first-class and it simply
meant that having a seat in a third-class carriage in India does not insure
your finishing the journey by the train in which you started.

My servant was left behind on this occasion and was consequently not
forthcoming when I reached Nabha Station in the morning. Poor faithful
Tambusami had not understood whither we were bound, but for some reason
or other thought it might be Patiala, and when I returned to Lahore three
days later I found him weeping on the platform after vain endeavours to
track me.

At Nabha I was met by three of the Rajah's ministers and driven in a

luxurious victoria to a large guest-house painted red and blue and standing in
quite beautiful grounds. A pair of horses drew the victoria, but a kind of
wagonette which followed with my luggage was pulled by two camels which
always have rather a circus air in harness.

The red brick-work of the building was all picked out with white, like the
walls of a doll's house, and on each side of the wide arch at the entrance
there was a life-size painting of a turbaned soldier presenting arms.

His Highness's private secretary could not speak English, and a native
gentleman, Mr Hira Singh, who was a schoolmaster in the town, had been
deputed to attend me as interpreter during my stay.

I was taken first into the reception-hall, which was hung with small
portraits in gouache of former rajahs and famous Sikh monarchs, such as the
Rajah Bhagwan Singh (the late Rajah of Nabha), the late Rajah Ragh Bir
Singh of Sandoor and the Maharajah Ranjeet Singh, who was painted in a
green dress with a halo round his head and mounted upon a brown horse. In
large letters on one wall appeared the motto:—
 "May God increase your prosperity."

Breakfast was served me in a large room adjoining the great hall. Over
the carpet a white drugget was spread and the chairs were all covered in pink
chintz.

Mr Hira Singh suggested that I must need some rest and should sleep
awhile, so I was taken to my bedroom which was another large apartment. It
was a blend of the genuinely Oriental and the Tottenham Court Road. The
washstand was humbly and yet aggressively British, while the wide bed was
gorgeously upholstered and covered with a beautiful silk coverlet of canary
yellow, and was furnished with two tiny hard cushions or pillows in the
middle, as well as an ample allowance for the head. I was certainly tired with
the journey and nothing loth to lie down. Outside one of the open doors of
the room I could see the red-and-blue lance pennon of a sentry appearing
and reappearing as he passed to and fro in the sunlight. His footsteps were
quite noiseless, and wondering whether after all it was the real sentry or one
of the painted ones from the archway wall I fell fast asleep to wake an hour
later and find that Sirdar Bishan Singh, Vakil to the political agent of the
Phulkian States, a stout, pleasant-looking little man, and Sirdar Jawala
Singh, His Highness's minister of finance, taller and darker, were patiently
waiting for me in the reception-room, sitting side by side on chairs, with
their feet primly together and silently looking before them.

His Highness had graciously consented to give me an hour's sitting the

next morning, and these gentlemen had come to drive me to the palace
where the painting was to be done to choose a position of suitable lighting.
So down I walked again by the five long steps between the blue columns and
out through the archway to the victoria, and the painted sentries were still
presenting arms and the live one stood at attention. We drove first to the
Diwan Khana by the Winter Palace, and going up a long flight of steps to an
upper quadrangle I was shown the rooms of the State Treasury and the old
heavily-bound boxes containing the wealth of Nabha.

The Diwan Khana itself is used for durbars, and the whole of the upper
part of the great room is one continuous forest of chandeliers, mostly of
green cut glass. On the walls of this Durbar Hall I noticed four beautiful old
miniature portraits of rajahs, with real pearls fitted in for necklets and
precious stones and gems on the horses' trappings as in eikons of the Greek
Church and a painting of a feast, larger, but worked in the same style as the
miniatures. The building was erected in the time of the Maharajah Jaswan
Singh of Nabha, and the very florid carpets were certainly not of any earlier
date.

As we drove away I saw many pigeons and green parrots about the walls
of the Winter Palace, and noticed that all over the building niches had been
left for the birds.

Mr Hira Singh told me that the population of Nabha town is over 15,000
and that it is "quite a busy city" with steam cotton-mills (I had seen the tall
chimneys near the railway station). The city gateways I passed through are
quite stately buildings and in an upper chamber of each gateway, with its silk
covering hanging out over the window-sill, is kept a copy of the sacred
Granth of the Sikhs.

Driving through part of the city and out again we passed a Hindoo
temple with a spacious tank, over one end of which spread the twisting
branches of a beautiful "beri" tree, and before long came to Elgin House, a
newer building than the Winter Palace, with a very large Durbar Hall, having
at one end a painting of Queen Victoria. It was here that the sitting was to
take place, and after choosing a suitable position in which His Highness's
gold chair of state might be placed ready I went over the rooms of Elgin
House and also upon the roofs of the upper storeys.

The Vakil showed me the chief treasures with great pride, but among
them all there was not a single beautiful thing of native craftsmanship.
Instead of this there were huge modern German vases—pictures sliced into
one another by a mechanical trick, so that as you moved along in front, the
Princess of Wales changed gradually into the Prince. Mechanical singing-
birds of most expensive accomplishment were made to warble for my
delectation and greatest of all wonders at the Court of Nabha, a clock-work
group of figures behaved quite like real people and a band of musicians
played operatic airs while a ballet dancer stood tiptoe on one leg. The
mechanical singing-birds had already made me think of Hans Andersen's
story of the nightingale, and here was the heroine of another of his tales re-
created after the burning she endured with her beloved tin soldier as
devotedly as any Hindoo widow of suttee days.

The formal gardens were pleasantly arranged, but managed to avoid the
beauty of an Oriental Bagh without achieving that of the European style they
sought to imitate. The proportions were good, but there was no grass and one
longed vainly for spaces of lawn or greensward to contrast with the elaborate
carpet bedding.

On leaving Elgin House we drove to the Gurdwara of Baba Ajabal

Singh. A tall and handsome black-bearded priest of thirty-two years showed
us over the building, but what most interested me was a wild-looking figure I
saw hanging about the cloisters. He was armed with a sword and dressed
entirely in black garments, with a huge black turban twisting in and out of
steel circlets and irons, and bound over and round in its turn by a metal
chain. This was an Akali, one of that still privileged sect of fighting fanatics
who became famous in Ranjeet Singh's time under the daring and
picturesque "Gardana Sahib"—Alexander Gardner (born on the shores of
Lake Superior in 1785).

I had heard that the Akalis wear blue garments to perpetuate the memory
of the blue clothes the Guru Govind Singh wore as a disguise, on the
occasion of an escape from Moghul soldiers, and part of which he gave to
one of his disciples to found a new order—that of the Akalis in question, but
this man's habiliments were as black as a crow's feathers. Like their famous
Rajah, Ranjeet Singh himself, this latter-day specimen of the bhang-drinking
cut-and-thrust "immortals" had only one eye, and I asked whether he had by
chance lost its fellow in a fight. "I have never had a chance of a fight," said
the Akali—adding consistently with the tenets of his sect—"if I did I would
never give in." While we were talking a thin old Sikh limped towards us; he
had once been taller than the average man, but was now bent and emaciated
with constant opium-eating. Mr Hira Singh told me that he took one "masha"
(equal to 16 grains) at a time and took it twice in every twenty-four hours.
The old rascal, his deep brown eyes twinkling, put to me a special petition
that the Government should grant to all real opium eaters a large quantity
gratis at regular intervals to make them happy. He said also, on my asking
him what he dreamed about—"In my dreams I think of the Creator, and I
feel very earnest to go to a better field and to fight there," which, as I was
assured the man was an abandoned scoundrel, may be taken as Oriental
humour expressed with an eye to backsheesh.

Driving back to the guest-house we passed an arena where wrestling

matches are held, with six circular tiers of high stone steps as seats for the
spectators, and a square "loge" built in the middle of one side for the
notables, and here is conducted the only physical "fighting" that takes place
at Nabha nowadays. The day of the Akalis is over, and while their brother
Sikhs make some of the best material in the Indian Army, the devotees of
this narrow sect have become wandering mendicants, privileged to carry
warlike weapons, and truculently direct in their demands for alms.

The portrait sitting was fixed for eight o'clock the next morning, and ten
minutes before his time the noble old Rajah stepped from his carriage and
walked almost jauntily up the steps of Elgin House, where I was already
installed with palette and canvas.

Gorgeously apparelled in a costume that was like a kiss between two

halves of the Arabian Nights, and wearing upon pale greenish silk a galaxy
of decorations which included the G.C.I.E. for his part in the last Afghan
War (he is now an honorary Colonel in the British Army) and stars and
medals from many great Durbars, the Chief of Nabha wore at the same time
an air of vigour and joy in life that made the years sit lightly on his
shoulders, years that a wrinkled forehead declared numerous.

One of his ministers told me through Mr Hira Singh that at the last Delhi
Durbar His Highness had delighted every one by the spirited and boyish way
in which he had galloped his horse along in front of the assembled princes.
May he appear as hale and vigorous at the Durbar of December next!

After he had shaken hands with me and beamed cordial smiles, we

walked through the Durbar hall to the room where I had set up my easel, and
the Rajah sat, as arranged, in a chair of gilded brass with lion arms, and
directed his gaze at a particular flower vase upon which we had fixed to keep
his head in correct position for the portrait. The pupils of his eyes were
brown, with a faint grey rim, and he had long waving moustaches as well as
a long yellowish white beard. He carried a sword with scabbard of pale
green and gold, a steel mace with spherical head, and a contrivance by
which, when a catch was pressed at the end of the handle, a number of short
sharp blades started out from the head, and also a steel trident of new
pattern. The old man was bent upon having as many arms about him as
possible, and sent for a large shield of black metal with four bright bosses
and a crescent, a favourite rifle and another trident sceptre, so that I had all I
could do to dispose these about him in such a way that he could sit
comfortably and keep his head still. He seemed especially proud of the mace
with the trick knives, and after explaining the mechanism to me with gusto
he continued at intervals during the sitting to manipulate it, at which the
whole court laughed heartily. They were grouped on either side in all the
glory of official costume and included the Commander-in-Chief, who came
to England for the Coronation of Edward VII., the Foreign Minister, the
Finance Minister, the Chief Justice, the Medical Adviser, and various
generals and councillors.

To paint a portrait in an hour! Well, I was not sorry that His Highness
had arrived before the arranged time, and that I had already set my palette,
and though it would have been intensely interesting to have talked with the
Chief of Nabha through the excellent interpreter, when once the weapons
were arranged to incommode him as little as possible, I went at the painting
with the fury of an Akali and contented myself with smiling appreciatively at
his occasional ejaculations.

Every now and then he made a peculiar coughing noise, which began
softly and rose to a crescendo, sounding as formidable as the traditional
catchwords of the giant of the bean-stalk. It was like "ahum, ahum, ahum—
ahhum," and kept his ministers in lively attention.

As nine o'clock struck (for there were clocks at Nabha as well as at

Elsinore) I laid down my palette and am glad to say His Highness expressed
with Eastern courtesy great delight at the sketch.

Before going he sent for his favourite grand-child, Sirdar Fateh Singh, a
boy of about twelve years of age, who shook hands frankly with me. On
hearing that I must positively leave Nabha that afternoon—in spite of his
kindly pressure to stay at least a fortnight—the Rajah gave orders for the
finest of his State elephants to be sent round to the guest-house that I might
see an ingenious device by which fountains of water from a hidden tank
played from the front of his head to lay the dust. The elephant, unlike his
vigorous old master, is weak and ailing, but I found him still a magnificent
beast and arrayed even more gorgeously than lilies in sunlight-carrying
scores of crystal lamps as well as the fountains.

Mechanical arrangements of all kinds seemed specially to delight the

Rajah and he again showed me one of the singing birds I had seen the
previous day. Just before leaving Elgin House His Highness paid me the
pretty compliment of asking if he might have permission to go.

CHAPTER XX

IN SIGHT OF AFGHANISTAN

I left Lahore soon after eight o'clock one evening and when I woke in the
train next day found myself smothered in dust and traversing the great Sind
Desert, that almost rainless tract, which depends solely for any possibility of
cultivation on irrigation from the Indus.

An important trade route from Afghanistan and Persia coming through

the Bolan Pass has its base at Shikarpur, in Upper Sind, a few miles from the
great cantilever bridge, called the Lansdowne Bridge, which joins
Baluchistan to India crossing the Indus between Sukkur and Ruk.

An engineer was waiting at Sukkur railway station to show me the great

bridge, and as I had to continue my journey the same evening we were
obliged to face the heat of the sun and started back towards the river on a
trolley worked by hand levers. We passed a kite's nest close to the railway on
the perpendicular face of a mass of limestone rock.

Sukkur is a good-sized town of more than 30,000 inhabitants, but its

buildings seemed to be all of wattle and daub, though three and even four
storeys high, and they were grey in colour, uncomfortably monotonous in the
terrific heat.

A single span of the bridge joins the Sukkur side to Bhakkur Island, a
mass of limestone rock fortified centuries ago. The keys of the gates were in
charge of a signaller at the blockhouse and a bridge inspector. While they
were being obtained I read the inscription upon the bridge—

"Erected by F. E. Robertson and M. S. N. Hecquet, 1887-

1889. Girders made by Westwood Baillie & Co., London. J.
S. R., 1887."

It is one of the great monuments of Queen Victoria's reign, one among

the many bridges, waterworks and railroads that have so far monopolized in
modern India all architectural aspiration. Splendid in its utility, an inspiring
instrument of commercial development, it looks like the creation of some
great Arachnid but stretches its iron network so far into the air that it is as
much larger than any spider's trap-net as the highest of the Himalayas
exceeds an ant-hill. I walked a little way on Bhakkur Island and stood on the
sand under some high walls looking at the Ruri end of the bridge. They were
the walls of an old nunnery called "Suttian," I think for widows who had
declined to be burned with their dead husbands. The engineer told me in
connection with "Suttian" that a man named Mosu Shah was said to have
built a minaret we could see with the object of spying upon one of the nuns
with whom he was in love.

Out in the stream in front of us two men were "pala" fishing. They had
swum out each with an immense metal chattie to keep him afloat and, resting
upon these, fished the river with nets on long slender poles, putting the fish
inside the chattie as they took them from the net. The fish come up to spawn
and the men float down stream with their nets in front of them.

They drifted through the very reflections of the vast cantilevers just as a
train was steaming over the bridge and made one more of the innumerable
contrasts of the old and new order I had seen in India.

Regaining the trolley we crossed to the Ruri shore and walked some
distance over the wide burning sand for the best view of the bridge. A
number of cattle were down upon the sand near the water-edge seemingly
well content, as I have seen great herds baking in summer heat on level sand
on the West Coast of Ireland at the edge of the Atlantic. Here at Ruri,
however, the sun beat with greater fury and a group of Sindi boatmen and
their families, who had been busy mending sails spread out on the sand, had
all stopped work till cooler hours arrived.

In the summer, that engineer assured me, the thermometer reaches 240°
and even 250° in the shade! "I have been here twelve years," he said, "and
during all that time we have had six rainfalls." He pointed out to the right of
the bridge the magazine where dynamite was stored for blasting purposes,
and, farther to the right, another small island with a very old temple on it.
This island is called Khwajah Khisah and the temple shrine, although the
building is in the form of a mosque, is frequented by both Hindoos and
Mohammedans.

There is a very important project in hand for damming the Indus just
above this temple so as to raise the water-level and so feed the canals during
the dry season as well as at periods of flood. I could make out the head of the
Begari Canal, then quite dry, in the distance between Khwajah Khisah and
the island of Bhakkur.

When I returned by the trolley to Sukkur there was a local train in the
station and the carriage in front of the waiting-room where I sat resting in the
shade seemed to contain the most obviously authentic prototypes of that
famous Asiatic "forty," more celebrated even in Europe than the French
Academy. Red faces with large mouths agrin between thick moustaches and
short bushy black beards, blue turbans and dirty finery—the very perfection
of stage villains, but Morgiana? No, I could not see her and the music of the
opera, The Barber of Baghdad, with its superb iterations of that lady's name
came drifting through my head.

The reflections of the dull red girders of the bridge were now almost
green.
 I again slept in the train that night and woke up in the Bolan Pass in
British Baluchistan. At half-past nine in the morning the sky was very pale
and although the shadows of the hill-clefts were clear they were not hard. On
each side of the line there was a flat boulder-strewn plain which was stopped
abruptly a quarter of a mile away by steeply rising heights of rock. Then
suddenly the flat plain itself would be trenched and split into huge cañons,
clefts going deep down into the earth. A few grey dried plants, almost the
same colour as the stones, were the only visible signs of vegetation.

In the early morning at Sibi Junction I had branched off on the Western
(or Quetta) arm of the great loop which extends from Sibi to Bostan
Junction. By ten o'clock the train with two powerful engines was ascending a
gradient of one in twenty-five beyond Hirok. From the window I could
watch, upon the old Kandahar Road below, the old slow-creeping progress
of a camel caravan. The pass was now narrowing, closing up on each side
and the cliffs rose steeply where at a sharp turn I caught sight of a square
block-house perched on a jutting crag.

At Quetta I had the double annoyance of missing luggage and of being

taken, on account of my dark beard, for an expected French spy. The latter
misunderstanding was put right by a subdivisional officer from Chaman (the
present terminus of the railway beyond the end of the Kojak Pass) whither I
was bound and where, having left the loop at Bostan Junction, I arrived the
same evening to get a peep across the border into Afghanistan—to set foot in
the Amir's country, that land of Mohammedan freebooters, waiting and
waiting in vain for an autonomous India whereunto their co-religionists
would be able to welcome an invading army.

Going out into the sunlight from the gloom of the dak bungalow
everything seemed at first only brightness, as if the external world were like
a cup brimmed with a throbbing intensity of light. Then, as my eyes
accustomed themselves, I saw that near the bungalow were peach and
apricot trees holding sprays of blossom, rose and white against the pale blue
of the sky, and that in the distance on every side mountains rose out of the
plain, not grey and cold but warm with faint tints of amethyst and delicate
red, and that snow lay upon their higher peaks.
 Chaman lies in the plain within a horseshoe of mountains, and the space
of clearly seen country is so vast that the mountains look almost as if drawn
upon a map. The little town is entirely of wattle and daub, a grey blanket
colour with just a little paint and whitewash about a Hindoo temple, and here
and there a peach tree in flush of blossom. The main street is very wide and
in front of some of the shops there are tiny enclosures, five or six feet square
like miniature front gardens. Two patriarchal looking old Pathans were
walking along in front of the shops. They wore the same kind of stout leather
boots, and from above the turban peeped the same type of conical head-
covering that I had seen worn by pedlars in Ceylon and throughout the
length and breadth of India. They were Achakzai Pathans and one, whose
name was Malik Samunder Khan, said he was eighty years old.

Seeing the entrance of a caravanserai I was going in when Tambusami

demurred. It was a long way truly from his home near Tuticorin, and he gave
these Northern folk his favourite epithet calling them "jungle people."
Seeing that I was going into the sarai in spite of his remonstrance, he said
submissively, "Where you go I come," but added, "Where you not go I not
go."

There were not many camels within, but in one corner some Afghans
were pouring raisins into heaps, and inviting me to eat, gave me larger and
finer dried grapes than I had ever seen. The raisins were called "abjush" and
the men were Popalzais (Candaharis). Alas! we could exchange no talk but
they made me welcome, and while we squatted silent in the sunlight and the
clear delicious air, one, taking up a stringed instrument called a "rahab,"
sang to its accompaniment. It was certainly not a song of fighting: there was
gladness in it—even passion now and then—but no fury—I think it was a
love-song. It was not a song of fatherland: there was pride in it but no
arrogance. Nor was it assuredly a song of religion: there was faith in it and
adoration, but no abasement. Yes, I'm sure it was a love-song.

Quetta with its gardens and orchards, its fortified lines and its command,
by reason of natural position, of both the Kojak and the Bolan Passes, is one
of the most important of Indian Frontier posts. I returned to it from Chaman
and drove and walked about its wide and well-metalled roads such as the
"High School Road," the "Agent Road," and the "Kandahar Road." Trees, as
yet bare of leaves, lined the sides, and fruit blossom looked gaily over walls
and fences.

The "Holi" festival of the Hindoos coloured these days. The throwing of
red powder or red-tinted water seemed pretty general, and hardly a white
dhoti was to be seen that was not blotched with crimson or vermilion
splashes. People danced in the streets, and one came suddenly on a crowd
watching folk wild as bacchanals, both men and women dressed in gay
finery, garlanded with flowers and dancing with strange fantastic gestures in
obedience to the universal song of spring's new advent. I went early to bed in
another dak bungalow, having somewhat of a fever about me since the
blazing hours two days before at the Lansdowne Bridge, and awoke in the
early hours. My great-coat had fallen down at one side of the charpoy, and I
felt as if a cold plaster lay upon my chest. Tambusami was crouched in front
of the fire and had fallen asleep covered in his blanket. From the blackened
broken hearth a little acrid smoke puffed fitfully into the room. On the floor
lay a torn and extremely dirty dhurrie which had once been blue. Between
the dhurrie and the damp earth mildewed matting showed here and there
through the holes. A decrepit looking-glass in a broken frame stood upon
one rickety table against the wall, and on another an iron tray of uncleaned
dinner-plates added to the general air of dirt and squalor.

Leaving Quetta by a morning train I was again passing through a region

mountainous on either side beyond a plain white with leprous-like tracts of
salt. It resembled neither frost nor snow, but was a strange blotchy
incrustation as if the earth were smitten with some fearful pestilence.

On one side the mountains were grey with violet shadows following their
clefts and scoriations, spotted in places by dark leafless shrubs, and on their
summits lay a little snow. On the other side the hills were red with only soft
warm hints of shadows, and beyond them was a band of filmy blue almost as
light as the sky. Soon, as the train raced on, the intervening plain became
strewn with small loose boulders and isolated tufts of dry dead prickly bush.
Two long tents like giant slugs hugged the ground with their black bodies,
and near them a few scattered sheep hunted the sparse nourish of aridity.

Again I passed Bostan Junction, this time, however, instead of going on

towards Chaman, turning to follow round the Eastern arm of the loop by
what is called the Harnai Route. The landscape had quite altered, but was
still strange and unhealthy looking. A veritable pigment seemed to exude
from it, varying in different parts of the same field of vision. The outlines
were noble but the colour, instead of being the effect of light and air upon
masses either of local uniformity or varied by differences as of flowers or
vegetation, was by this frequent change in the hue of the earth itself too
prismatic for majesty and too trivial for grandeur. A rugged pile of grey rock
will receive from the procession of the hours indescribable glories, but a
mass of mixed French fondants squashed into the same shape could never
capture a tithe of such beauty. In chalky half-tones the landscape ran the
entire gamut of reds, yellows, blues and greens, with an appearance of false
sweetness as if the face of earth had been smeared with pigment destroying
all natural glow.

And yet—and yet—as noon grew nearer and the hovering heat made all
things hazy and indistinct, where all merged and was lost, and nothing began
or ended, surely that was beautiful—earth mother—mother-o'-pearl.

After leaving Mangi Station the train approached the famous Chappa
Rift where a vast and sudden break in the mountain makes a wide
stupendous chasm, with steep perpendicular sides. I was permitted to ride
upon the locomotive for this part of the journey and watch this wild and
desolate magnificence of nature's architecture unfold its terrible titanic
grandeur. At one point the railway crosses the rift by an iron bridge called
after the Duchess of Connaught. Entering a tunnel in the vast wall of rock
the train emerges again at one end of the bridge, and after crossing the gulf
turns along the other side so that for some long time this narrowest part
remains in sight, the maroon red ironwork of the bridge staring dramatically
in the centre of a desolate landscape of silver grey. No patch of grass or
shrub or any other live thing is to be seen—only the immensity of the scale
is marked by one small block-house, a minute sentinel which shows against
the sky on the tallest height of cliff.

As the journey continued, the rocks took more fantastic shapes and
above a steely gleaming river and its grey beach of stones, the cliff became
like serried rows of crumbling columns as if some cyclopean Benares
uplifted by earthquake reared its line of petrified palaces against the sky.
 CHAPTER XXI

RAJPUTANA

Jaipur was stricken by plague: the number of deaths had gone on

increasing and the living were thrown into a state of bewilderment. The
Rajput princesses had fled in panic to the old palace of Amber and strangers
were, for the time, asked not to visit that ancient capital. The dinner-table
that evening, spread in the open courtyard of the hotel, became heaped with
moths attracted by the lamps and dying through their ardour, and it almost
seemed as if some spiritual light were attracting in the same way human
souls to leave their bodies tenantless.

In company with the Nazim (district officer) I started out betimes in the
morning—passed the large grey bungalow of the Rajah's chief minister, the
lunatic asylum, long cactus hedges and gardens in which white-domed
cenotaphs of buried chiefs gleamed among graceful acacia-like Aru trees,
while peacocks arched their jewelled necks upon the walls,—and entered the
city by that one of its seven gateways called the Moon Door (Chand Pol),
crenelated and covered with painted decoration which included a guardian
figure on each side of the entrance, turbaned soldiers with fixed bayonets
supported on different shoulders in the artist's desire for symmetry.

The gateway was really like a large square tower with considerable open
space inside, thatched huts leaning up against its outer wall. Inside the city
the wide well-paved streets looked so clean and spacious and the pink-
coloured stucco of the houses so bright and gay, that Death seemed a cruel
intruder there without excuse. Yet three corpses were carried past us while
we stopped for a moment. "The one in yellow is a woman," said the Nazim. I
asked why a group of Mohammedans sat in the courtyard of a house near us,
and the Nazim said: "Someone has died there—these are friends met to read
some of the aphorisms of the Koran."
 The day before there had been fifty-four deaths in the city, which was
some decrease as the daily toll had quite recently reached one hundred.

In the Chand Pol Bazaar there were not many people about, though to the
stranger there was no evidence of calamity beyond the occasional passing of
corpses. The sunshine was so bright and the air so pleasant, and a crowd of
pigeons fluttered and strutted with such animation round a sacred bull! Near
us a small peepul tree hung over one wall of a red sandstone temple—the
Sita Ramjika—like a fountain of green and gold.

At the famous observatory Mr Gokul Chandra Bhawan Raj Jotshi, who is

in charge of it, showed me round the strange gigantic instruments. We
examined the largest sundial in the world, with gnomon 75 feet high; and
standing in the paridhi, the circumference of the dial, I could see, above
some pink dwelling houses, the clock in the palace tower which is regulated
by the old dial.

Very curious are the twelve houses of the Zodiac (Rashi Valya) each with
a little painting of its celestial landlord upon the thickness of the wall under
its four-centred arch.

The Nazim took me on to see the Maharajah's Palace, and in its lovely
gardens, near a tree of Kachnar in full bloom, we came upon the tomb of a
pet dog whose memory had been honoured with a sculpture of his canine
incarnation carved in black marble and protected by a dome-topped marble
kiosk. The Nazim said the dog had been loved for his extreme obedience,
and there was a tale of some gold bangle lost in a billiard-room which he had
restored to a despairing owner. It was a graceful monument in beautiful
surroundings and a great contrast to the unpleasing tombstones in that
crowded little canine cemetery near the Marble Arch in London, but there
was another piece of sculpture in that garden which I was more anxious to
see, but which, alas for me! was hidden that morning.

Gobindaji, said to be one of the most beautiful of the carved figures at

Muttra, was brought here for safety by the Maharajah Mon Singh, and is
apparently treated as if the stone has quite corporeal needs, for the Nazim
said: "True he lives at the bottom of this garden. He has his hours:
sometimes he has just taken his food and sometimes he is sleeping. Just now
he sleeps, so you are not able to see him."

I love most gardens where old statues sleep, but without any wish to
disturb their slumbers possess some little of Aladdin's curiosity—or
Coventry Tom's; besides, had I known Gobindaji's hours I would have timed
my visit more opportunely. As it was, in this garden where dogs have
monuments and statues lunch, I could at least enjoy the jasmine flowers and
the blossoms of the pomegranates and the grapevines trailing over rough
stone uprights.

At the bottom of the garden we passed through a door in the wall, and
walking down a narrow flight of steps beheld the Rajah's crocodiles under
the windows of the zenana quarters. The keeper of the crocodiles was an old
white-bearded man, extremely tall and thin—so thin in fact that his charges
must have long ceased to wait with any eagerness for indiscretion in too near
approach. The spacious tank was enclosed on three sides by a wall, and on
the fourth by the palace itself. We had descended by the steps from a terrace
and stood on a small piece of muddy ground on to which the thin keeper
enticed his huge charges by throwing a bundle of rag towards them and
withdrawing it by a string. In the middle of some beautiful public gardens
close to the city stands Jaipur's "Albert Hall," a large building in white
marble, which contains a durbar hall and a fine collection of examples of
Indian art and industry. Its courts are decorated with mottoes translated from
Persian and Hindoo literature, and as maxims for guidance they are not at all
easy to reconcile with each other. From the Hitopadesa, for example, on one
wall is quoted:—

"Fortune attends the lion-hearted man

Who acts with energy; weak-minded persons
Sit idly waiting for some gift of fate."

And on another from the same source is written:—

"He has all wealth who has a mind contented.

To one whose foot is covered with a shoe
 The earth appears all carpeted with leather."

After all they represent different aspirations and only mystify because
they are marshalled here as from the same authority. One man would rather
have a rough road tearing his defenceless feet as he treads it with a purpose,
while another would prefer to watch a garden sundial marking contented
hours that leave no record behind them. And the first might fall powerless on
the wayside, and the second shatter a kingdom by the report of quiet words.

There are aviaries of beautiful birds in the gardens about the museum—
rose-coloured flamingoes and Rajput parrots with heads like peaches and
pale grey "Mussulmans" from Mecca, with primrose crests and orange
cheeks.

At his bungalow not far away I had the pleasure of a chat with Sir
Swinton Jacobs, the dear old engineer and architect who has done so much
to keep alive traditions of Indian craft-work, and is one of the very few
Englishmen who has not flown from India when white hairs came.

In all India no spot has been so rapturously praised for its beauty as
Udaipur in Rajputana and its lake-reflected palaces. Travelling towards it
from Jaipur I found myself a day later in the State of Mewar, passing fields
of the white opium poppies for which the State is famous.

Udaipur is a white town and comes quite suddenly into view after you
have been watching from the train a lovely range of hills, warm and
glowing. The bright railway station is a grey stone building with a square
tower, and the lower part of it is half smothered in pale convolvulus. The
flowers are glorious at Udaipur, and I found the white house of the British
Resident bowered in magnificent bougainvillias. This gentleman kindly
promised to ask the Maharana to grant me a sitting for a painting.

Driving over a bridge past crenelated walls, a road hedged by dense

broad-leaved cactus, led me on to a forest of leafless trees softer in colour
than an olive wood. It was like a forest from a fairy-tale, with troops of wild
long-legged swine and peacocks, their bright tails rushing through the
branches like a coloured wind. Then I came out upon the waterside where
the white group of palaces with their long sloping ramps, their many flights
of steps and galleries, their towers and cupolas, rose up majestically,
unrivalled save by their own reflection in the lake. What part was plaster
looked like marble, and what was marble glowed tremulously warm like
some white mineral counterpart of flesh.

THE PALACE OF THE MAHARAJAH OF UDAIPUR. [DRYPOINT

ETCHING.]

Four rowers pulled me in a long boat to the Jag Mandar, one of two
palaces which, completely covering the small islands on which they are
built, appear to be floating upon the water. I landed at some wide steps at
one end of a terrace on which four stone elephants stand with raised trunks
saluting. A band of darker colour upon their legs and on the walls showed
that the water was at a lower level than it sometimes reached. There was a
garden within the walls of the palace from which three palms rose high
above the rounded shapes of lower growing trees.

The Maharana had consented to give me a sitting of one hour at four

o'clock in the afternoon. A two-horse carriage took me through the city to
the lake-front and then along under the white walls of the palace. More than
ever as I passed close beneath them was I struck by the similarity in general
shape of one great series of towers to those of old Baynard's Castle; but
never have the waters of the Thames reflected so white a building! And the
beauty of that vast whiteness destroyed for me forever the old argument
which tries to explain the former strong coloration of Greek architecture by
saying that large surfaces of white building would have been intolerable
under Southern sun.

After I had arranged my easel in the room, which had been fixed upon
for the painting, the Maharana entered, carrying a long sword in a green
scabbard. We bowed to each other and after moving to the chair which had
been placed for him he motioned me to be seated also.

Of all the native princes in India, the Maharana of Udaipur has the
longest pedigree, and his kingdom is the only Rajput State which can boast
that it never gave a daughter in marriage to a Moghul emperor. This tall and
dignified chieftain is High Priest of Siva as well as ruler of the State of
Mewar, and is revered for his religious office no less than for his temporal
sovereignty. He is thoroughly and proudly loyal to the British rule, but a
brother of the Englishman who did his utmost (in accordance with expressed
wishes from high quarters) to bring him to the Coronation Durbar of 1903,
once told me that on the morning of the great function "my brother found
Udaipur on the floor of his tent, stark naked and ill with fever, so that he
could not go."

His beard and moustache were brushed upwards and stained with some
dye which made them a metallic blue colour. A small turban came down
over the left temple. He wore no orders or decorations, and his only
jewellery consisted in a double row of pearls round the neck and one
diamond ring on the right hand. A long gown, with close-fitting sleeves,
made of maroon-coloured cloth, and bound at the waist by a belt and a white
sash, clothed him from the neck to the velvet-shod feet.

He had agreed to sit for me for one hour but I thought, in spite of his
gentle dignity, the first quarter was for him a long while going. During that
time no one had spoken, and I asked whether he had not in the palace some
teller of stories who might keep him from feeling the irksomeness of sitting
so long in one position. When the interpreter explained my suggestion he
smiled and asked whether it could trouble me if he talked with his ministers;
and two of these, coming forward at my acquiescence, talked with him
throughout the rest of the sitting, and as he still kept well his position for me
the change was mutually agreeable.

To my left, beyond an outer gallery, lay the beautiful lake, and, crowning
a hill immediately opposite, shone the whiteness of the Summer Palace.

On my way back from Udaipur I stopped at Chitorgarh, fifty miles away,

to drive to the famous fortress city of Chitor, the former capital of Mewar.

The hill of Chitor lies on the flat land like a long mole or hog's back. All
along its crest old tawny buildings with towers and turrets stretch in a broken
line as if they formed the ridge of some old saurian's back with many of the
spines broken. Rather beyond the centre the Tower of Victory, yellow and
tawny as the rest of the buildings, appears sharply prominent. Trees circle
the hill at its base and rising from among them the road leads steeply along
and up the side of the cliff in one long zigzag. The slopes of the hill looked
grey as I approached.

The tonga I had engaged to drive me from Chitorgarh crossed by a stone

parapeted bridge the almost empty River Ghamberi, in the bed of which the
bare rock jutted up in sloping shelves. We passed a cemetery and several
fields of green barley, and the zigzag road up the hill looked more imposing
the nearer we drew, with its eye-holed curtain wall, its bastions and towers.
Still in the plain below, we now entered through the pointed arch of a
gateway the bazaar of modern Chitor. It was full of dogs, pigeons, cattle and
people,—a narrow crowded street at right angles to the hill. We turned by the
large white Kotwali and a beautiful temple porch and passed houses with