Description

As neither European nor Indian police officers spoke Cantonese at the time, the Hong Kong Police Force recruited local Cantonese people as Chinese police officers and added the letter C to their police identification numbers. These Chinese officers were in fact not trusted by the government at that time. They were equipped with only a long baton and none carried firearms. They had the lowest status in the Force and suffered from discrimination.

At that time, the land-based Chinese police officers wore dark green uniforms and bamboo hats in the Qing Dynasty style. The Queen Victoria crown was painted on the conical round hat. The popular Hong Kong saying “stewing Chinese mushrooms”, referring to being demoted in the workplace, came from the fact that Chinese police officers wore hats resembling Chinese mushrooms. In the past, the transfer of a police officer from uniform to plainclothes was considered a job promotion. It meant that the officer was appreciated by his superiors for his good performance. On the contrary, if a plainclothes police officer made a mistake, he would be demoted back to uniformed duties and would have to wear the Chinese-mushroom-like hat again, a practice commonly known as “stewing Chinese mushrooms”. In addition, they wore white socks and leggings and Chinese cloth shoes. They looked a bit big-headed and small-bodied, so they, together with the Indian police officers who had their heads wrapped in the turban, were often mocked as “big head green coat”.

Every police officer on patrol wore a police whistle. When he encountered a thief or robber, he would blow his whistle, which made a beeping sound, and would run to call for help from his colleagues nearby. There was a nursery rhyme: “ABCD, big head green coat, blow a BB when no cop can catch a thief”. The “BB” means a whistle, commonly known as a “chicken” in Cantonese, because the whistle’s sound is believed to be as noisy as a cock crowing. The whistle used to be made of silver, also known as a “silver flute”, and was commonly called a “silver chicken”. Nowadays, police officers rarely blow whistles to signal their presence, but the silver whistle is still an important symbol of the Force. The Silver Whistle Award, commonly known as “silver chicken’s head”, has been bestowed on recruit police constables in each class with the best overall performance at police passing-out ceremonies.