“Long before the age of cash boxes and the Octopus card, Hong Kong’s buses and trams had conductors who would collect fares. China Motor Bus (CMB) vehicles also had a gateman to supervise passengers boarding and leaving the bus. But by the mid-1970s, both CMB and Kowloon Motor Bus (KMB) were running one-man buses, with a cash box next to […]
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Newsletter 8 included a very short article on The Shiu Wing Steel company, the only steel rolling mill currently operating in Hong Kong, located at Tap Shek Kok, Tuen Mun. As of 18th January 2021 this claim would appear to be still true. The mill is capable of producing 700,000 tonnes per year of high-grade reinforcing bars for local and […]
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Amelia Allsop, Collections and Research Manager at The Hong Kong Heritage Project has kindly sent this extract from the quarterly Newsletter Past & Present Issue 13. Part of the Newsletter is about The Peninsula Hotel, which started life as an up-market transport hotel serving passengers arriving both by railway and ship. The HK Industrial History connection? Jock Inglis was General Manager of […]
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HF: IDJ has very kindly upgraded two of the photographs and the map included in the following article. In 1977 (?) the Water Supplies Department published a report publicizing the construction of Plover Cove reservoir which had been officially opened in January 1969, though the height of the dams was subsequently raised, this being completed in 1973. Two stages are […]
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HF: If you visit Yau Ma Tei Wholesale Fruit Market during the day you may well think it’s closed, ready to be fenced off and facing imminent demolition. However, piled boxes of fruit on the surrounding streets and inside locked wire cages within indicate there’s life in the old place yet. If you want to see the market fully functioning […]
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Elizabeth L Johnson wrote an article about “Patterned Bands” in the New Territories which was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, Volume 16, 1976. [HF: I have been unable to copy the Chinese characters which appear in the article.] The article begins: These notes on a form of peasant textiles are based on research conducted in Kwan […]
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Further to Dan Waters article “A Joss-stick Mill in Tsuen Wan” published August 26 2013 Here is a photograph of a water powered tilt-hammer used in crushing the production of incense. It is taken from a 1952 book “Hong Kong” by Harold Ingrams published by her Majesty’s Stationary Office, London in 1952. The book contains a chapter on Hong Kong’s […]
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IDJ has sent the following newspaper article. This adds further information to our article The Hongkong and China Gas Company Ltd – explosion 14th May 1934, from which the photograph below is taken. This article can found linked below. HF: I have retyped the article. Where I am not certain of the printed script I have indicated this uncertainty by […]
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IDJ + HF: This short report from the mid-1950s mentions: a) The different breeds of fish b) The levels these breeds feed at within the ponds c) The economic dynamics of photoplankton as shown in this charming illustration drawn by Ip Tam Po The Bionomics of Pondfish Culture in the New Territories T Chow, Fisheries Research Unit, Dept of Zoology, […]
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HF: Stephen Davies’ article, Ulderup and Schlüter Shipyard, Sham Shui Po c1900-1914, mentions that the shipyard became the local agents for the Swedish Bolinder marine diesels (Bolinder Rohölmotoren – strictly semi-diesels) – two strokes that for the first two decades of the 20th century were probably the world’s most common small marine diesels although most of their early output seems to have […]
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