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.
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 moreHF: 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 […]
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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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Tymon Mellor: It has never been clear why if there was a lead mine at Lead Mine pass, no one has developed the site when exploration has been undertaken all over the territory. There are references to the mine location on the contemporary maps and within Government reports following the take over of the New Territories in 1898. But no further […]
» Read moreHF: BACKGROUND ON THE SYSTEM’S CONSTRUCTION The northwest part of the New Territories of Hong Kong, which includes the new town of Tuen Mun, a developing market town, Yuen Long, and the Castle Peak Road corridor between the two towns, has been developing rapidly since the mid 1970s under the Hong Kong government’s new towns development program to cope with […]
» Read moreSee: Area the size of 12 football fields on former Kai Tak runway to store fallen trees in clean-up struggle after Mangkhut SCMP 30th September 2018 China developer’s net profit at Hong Kong’s old Kai Tak airport to lose altitude amid turbulence in property market SCMP 30th December 2018 More ships and more passengers, but Kai Tak Cruise Terminal is […]
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