HF: At Yan O Wan (also Yam), the bay just west of Sunny Bay MTR station on the north Lantau coast, you can still see large vertical tree trunks embedded in the sea floor. If you are in Hong Kong have a look next time you are on your way to the airport, Tung Chung or Disneyland by road or […]
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HF: “Gas Works Explosion.—At 11.05 a.m. on the morning of 14th May, 1934 a large gasometer with a capacity of 500,000 cubic feet belonging to the Hong Kong and China Gas Company, Limited, at West Point exploded, the flaming gas setting light to houses in Clarence Terrace, Chun Sing Street and Yu On Terrace. Within two hours the fire was […]
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A brief desciption of the well known Duddell Street Gas lamps in an AMO Declared Monuments online document suggests the lamps were “Two-light Rochester models made by Suggs and Co., the gas lamps were designed in a shorter length than was standard at the time in order to allow them to be mounted on the parapets of the steps. Originally […]
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IDJ has sent the article below, published in Flight International (1) of 22nd February 1968. This provides additional information to our already posted piece on the airline Lloyd International Airways Ltd, posted in December 2017, linked below. IDJ says the CAB mentioned in the extracts below is the Civil Aeronautics Board an agency of the federal government of the United States, […]
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HF: While walking up Hatton Road above the University of Hong Kong, on The Peak on Monday 22nd January 2018, I came across the signs below about the Myrobalan tree, also known as Emblic and Yau Kam Chi or Phyllanthus emblica (Euphorbiaceae). This can be added to our small but growing list of HK trees that were traditionally used to […]
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The following article has been extracted from the Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography. The publisher HK University Press, has given permission for it to be posted here. The following article about John Bell-Irving was written by Libby Halliday Palin and first published in the Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography, edited by May Holdsworth and Christopher Munn. The publisher, HK University Press, has […]
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“If you missed the last Star Ferry at 1:30am, [back in the 1960s] you could hire a walla-walla (jip6 laa1 jip6 laa1 嘩啦嘩啦), a kind of small motorised water taxi that plied the waters between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. “The name came from the sound of the boats when they were cruising,” says retired journalist Li Ping-sum,who grew up in Yau Ma Tei. […]
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Elizabeth Ride has sent BAAG reports included in the article World War Two – 1945 BAAG report on Dockyards in occupied Hong Kong. These included this extract regarding the Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock company, also and commonly known as the Kowloon Dock. It illustrates the extensive damage caused to the docks by allied bombing towards the end of WW2. IDJ […]
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IDJ: The felling of the concrete chimneys at the decommissioned Tsing Yi Power Station On 15 November 1998 the five chimneys were demolished at the same time by controlled explosives weakening the structures so they fell safely to the ground in a prearranged pattern. These images were taken from a video of the event. See: The Demolition of Tsing Yi […]
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Hugh Farmer: We currently have over 1,600 articles posted on the website. I wonder if you could spare a little time to help the site develop. Maybe an hour or two each month? The life blood of the Group and the website is articles, either about a new subject or adding additional information to one already posted. Articles do not […]
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