The turmoil in China before and after the 1911 Revolution drove crowds of Mainland refugees to Hong Kong, causing acute housing shortage in the small city. To solve the housing problem, as well as to attract wealthy refugees to stay put in Hong Kong, Ho Kai and Au Tak led a group of Chinese gentries and merchants to make a reclamation request to the government. They proposed to reclaim Kowloon Bay for the construction of an upper class Chinese residential district. It happened, however, that the economic downturn and the numerous strikes in the 1920s put a brake on the project, and a large plot of reclaimed land remained unused. It was in 1924 that westerners started utilizing the reclaimed area, which was then called Kai Tak Bund, for aviation activities. Soon the British Air Force3 rented the place as a temporary airfield and urged the government to acquire the land, formally turning it into the RAF (Royal Air Force) airport.

From the perspective of aviation development, the 78-year history of Kai Tak may be divided into two phases. The first starts from the 1920s when the rural, coastal reclaimed land was inadvertently transformed into a small airfield. As could be expected the facility was crude, and the airport was of a scale and standard just passable for the then uncomplicated air transport. The propeller plane was the only type of civilian and military aircraft. Seaplanes and landplanes frequented the airport, making Hong Kong an important entrepôt through which the colonizers traded with China and other Asian states. Passengers were naturally the prestigious officials and upper classes. Still, Kai Tak was a quiet suburban airport encompassed by natural waters and farmlands, sparsely populated except for Kowloon City, which resembled a small town. Such a tranquil setting lasted until the mid- 1950s, when, after the 3-year-and-8-month Japanese occupation, Kai Tak experienced a large-scale expansion and moved towards the age of civil aviation.

 

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