Author: Hugh Farmer
Hugh Farmer has lived in Hong Kong since 1989. He founded the Industrial History of Hong Kong Group in November 2012 to preserve and share information about the city's fast disappearing industrial heritage. This website was started in October 2013.
early shipping
Robert Fan Wenzhao, architect, involved in Hong Kong industrial locations
Maureen Fan left a comment below Carles Brasó Broggi’s article Shanghai Spinners: Pioneers of Hong Kong’s Industrialisation. This reads in part: Thank you for your informative article. My grandfather Robert Fan Wenzhao (1893-1979) was the architect who designed the HK Spinners factory at Cheung Sha Wan, including the workers dormitories, a dining hall, a recreation area, basketball and volleyball courts and […]
» Read moreearly shipping in Hong Kong
HF: From 1757 up to the outbreak of the Opium War, Guangzhou was China’s only trading port. After 1841, Hong Kong’s first dockyard was located in East Point, Causeway Bay. In 1857, the Scottish entrepreneur John Lamont built the Lamont Dock in Aberdeen.
» Read moreLeung Man Kwong (梁文廣) – clearance of HK harbour post WW2 and founder of Universal Dockyards
Stephen Davies: The founder of Universal Dockyards (now within the UDL Group) was Mr Leung Man Kwong (梁文廣, b. unknown-d.1966), who I’ve been trying to track down for ages and have at last managed to via this website. Mr Leung was the boss of 80 divers, shipwrights, blacksmiths and other salvage workers, who were on hand in late 1945/early 1946 (they’d […]
» Read morePlanned helicopter service HK to Macau 1962, Stanley Ho
Many thanks to IDJ for sending the article below. It announces that following Stanley Ho being awarded the Macau gambling franchise which took effect from 1st January 1962 he planned to introduce a helicopter service between Hong Kong and Macau. There are no further details about these proposals regarding locations, timetables, costs, helicopters etc. IDJ says the helicopter plan was […]
» Read moreThe Rope Making Industry in Hong Kong, 1957 Trade Bulletin article
Rope-Making Twine, halliards, cables – if what you need can be classified under the general heading of ‘rope’, it is almost certainly made in Hong Kong. One of the Colony’s earliest industries was ship-building from which a natural offshoot was rope-making. In 1883 Hong Kong’s first rope-making was opened with a capital of HK$150,000.[HF: this was The Hongkong Rope Manufacturing […]
» Read moreOf gods, diamonds and brothels – quarrying questions
Hugh Farmer: Researching my recent Quarrying in Hong Hong article brought up lots of place names with quarrying associations. And even more questions. Can you help answer any? A Kung Ngam Quarry: “A Kung literally means maternal grandfather or old man in Cantonese while Ngam means rock, but in the case of this place name, “A Kung” refers to Tam Kung, sea god, who the […]
» Read moreThe Shaw Brothers Movies
HF: The Shaw enterprise is one of the oldest and most influential enterprises in the Chinese language movie television circle. Having shaped the development of China’s movie industry for nearly a century, the enterprise has a story which coincides closely with Hong Kong’s own history. The Shaw’s story can be told in four parts, centering respectively on its phases as […]
» Read moreShek Kip Mei fire – the most devasting in Hong Kong’s history, started by an ”industrial” accident
HF: At Christmas 1953, Hong Kong changed forever. Around 9.30p.m. on the evening of the 25th December, a bucket of molten rubber was accidentally knocked over in the shanty town on Shek Kip Mei. Fire quickly spread through the wooden huts and rudimentary buildings of this vast squatter settlement. By the time the last flames were extinguished, two people were […]
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