When the Reverend Carl Smith died in Macau on Monday, the diverse peoples of the South China coast lost their most devoted chronicler.
Unlike any before him, Smith kept his twinkling eyes on the lives of ordinary people in Hong Kong, Macau and beyond.
Instead of listing the governors of the colony and their deeds, or following the history of the church through missionaries, Smith wondered about the other side - the people being ruled, or converted or, more often, not. He set out with dogged persistence to write it all down.
As a result, he is credited by every historian of Hong Kong and Macau with revolutionising the field. All of them (including this writer) have benefited from his generosity, his wit and his index cards.
Born on March 10, 1918, in Dayton, Ohio, Smith earned a Master in Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York and was ordained a minister in the Evangelical and Reformed Church (now the United Church of Christ). In 1960 he became a missionary and was sent to Hong Kong to teach theology at the Theological Institute in Tuen Mun, and then between 1962 and 1983 at Chung Chi Seminary and its successor, the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
In her book, Foreign Devils - Expatriates in Hong Kong, May Holdsworth described how Smith had to teach the history of the Protestant Church in China, about which he says he knew nothing.