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19Illustrated history ofbarristers in Hong KongAzan Marwah (with assistance from Jiang Zixin )Many are drawn to the Bar by its history, its mystique, its traditions, and the sense that we are part of something greater than ourselves. Therefore, it was with great pleasure that upon my call to the Bar, I received as a gift from the Hong Kong Bar Association (%u201cHKBA%u201d) a copy of our 50th Anniversary Book.It remains a treasured possession, an invaluable window into the past, with articles written by or about many of the barristers who had achieved legendary status by the time I was in pupillage %u2013 including some who had ceased practice (e.g. Sir Oswald Cheung, Patrick Yu, and Albert Sanguinetti) or who had entered the senior ranks of the Judiciary (e.g. Geoffrey Ma, Henry Litton, Kemal Bokhary, Roberto Ribeiro, and Robert Tang). It provided a history stretching back 50 years to the founding of the HKBA. It told the story of those who shaped the Bar as we know it %u2013 through (and, at times, in spite of) the political, social and economic upheavals at the end of the British administration through to the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (%u201cHKSAR%u201d). However, that is only part of our story. Below, we recount some of the highlights of the last 75 years of the HKBA but also of the 180 years of our profession in Hong Kong, how it has evolved and the stories of those who made it what it is now. It is a story of the triumph of professional advocacy and devotion to the law in the face of injustice and adversity.Until recently and with the advance of technology as well as more sophisticated forms of archiving, some of the events and dates which go back more than a century cannot necessarily be assumed to be entirely correct. This perhaps forms part of or at least contributes to the mystique of the history of the Bar.Illustrated history of barristers in Hong Kong 19