ABSTRACT

It was a much smaller world that the British now inhabited. Even after the loss of the military land, the old compound had covered many acres. Now the offices and residence occupied but one-and-a-half acres each. The flats where most staff now lived were in a nearby compound, shared with many other nationalities, and very different from the legation quarter. Winifred Stevenson, one of those forced to move in 1959, wrote that '. . . the new flat is far smaller than the old house and servants on top of one . . . [i]t's not beautiful, more or less Council house within and without . . . The Chinese have obviously tried to build European flats, copying without understanding half the arrangements'. 1