The Industrial History of Hong Kong Group
Preserving Hong Kong’s Industrial Heritage
HF: In his book, The Atlas: Archaeology of an Imaginary City, a mixture of fact and fiction about Hong Kong in the past and future, Dung Kai Cheung, Louis, writes about Sugar Street (糖街) in Causeway Bay. Dung recounts the local legend that the Hong Kong Mint, based there from 1866 to 1868, failed because, in spite of melted silver being […]
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HF: This lengthy report was “Presented to the Legaslative Council by the Command of His Excellency the Governor”, on the 1st November 1885. I present it with no further comment except that I hope it may be of value to anyone studying the early history of public water supply in Hong Kong. The contemporary photograph added to the original report […]
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Robert Taylor was manager of the Green Island Cement Company from about the late 1920s until the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and again for a short period after its liberation. He was born on 2nd June 1888 and died in January 1974 in his 86th year. Immediately prior to the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong he was a volunteer […]
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HF: It’s hard to walk along Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui these days without being accosted by someone offering the ubiquitous copy watches or gentlemen’s tailor sir. There may be several of the latter dotted around TST, Wanchai and Central but as Stuart Heaver recently wrote in an article for the SCMP the number of tailors in Hong Kong has suffered […]
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IDJ: When Cheung Wah Shipbuilding & Engineering Company was the labour supply contractor for the construction of Castle Peak Power Station they had to bring in several hundred and later probably thousands of workers daily to what was then a remote site. Eventually the ARGOS Bus Co was created by Cheung Wah using a fleet of secondhand double-deckers from the UK […]
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HF: “The bazaar was set up in the 1970s when the government moved hawkers off nearby streets to its site opposite Sham Shui Po Police Station. More than 100 textile vendors once crammed into the site, which resembles a small squatter village with its patchwork roof of corrugated metal, plastic sheets and tarpaulins. Although they are set out along a […]
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Stephen Davies recently wrote an article for the SCMP about maritime street names in Hong Kong. He noted, “considering Hong Kong is one of the world’s great ports, street names with maritime connections are remarkably few – no more than 10 per cent of the total. But that is enough, when loaded into a database and tested for patterns, to add […]
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Ian Wolfe posted this image of this signboard on flikr which he suggests might have been a small teaching establishment probably run by craftsmen in 70s, for those who were fascinated by the radio electronics world. He has translated the sign which certainly suggests Alice was an educational establishment of some form. Ian adds in an email to the Group that […]
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IDJ has sent the following article which he has kindly reformatted for inclusion here. Please note the locations of the images in this version have been changed from those in the original article. From The Railway Magazine, November 1983. Those who knew the British section of the Kowloon – Canton Railway before its modernisation would scarcely recognise it now. A […]
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IDJ has sent this letter, and accompanying image, which was written in response to the publication of the article Under the Wires to Lo Wu: The Modernisation of the Kowloon-Canton Railway in The Railway Magazine, November 1983, linked below. SIR, I am afraid the Rev. Alan Shone (November, page 438) is mistaken as to the identity of the 2-8-0 locomotives acquired […]
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