York Lo: Kun Wing Fook Medicine Co. (靳永福藥廠) and “Coconut Tree” brand carminative oil (椰樹牌驅風油) Left: Kun Wing Fook booth at the 1971-72 HK Products Expo (HK Memory); Right: article and picture of Kun Wing Fook booth at the 1959 HK Products Expo featuring a tree with coconuts imported from Singapore (TKP, 1959-12-6) Kun Wing Fook Medicine Co, best known […]
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HF “South China Iron Works Ltd., founded in 1938 [incorporated 19th December 1938], lost much of its machinery during the Japanese occupation…but by 1949 had resumed production of diesel engines, including ‘specially designed’ three wheeled vehicles ‘especially designed for use in Southeast Asia’, and 2.5 ton trucks.” (1) The works were in Tsuen Wan according to the report below and […]
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York Lo: Tung Kin Land Investment (東建置業) Tung Kin’s ad for Tung Fat and Tung Lee building in 1962 (WKYP, 1962-8-25) Tung Kin Land Investment Ltd was one of the active property developers in HK in the early 1960s and the firm was incorporated in 1958 with HK$1 million in capital by four directors of the Tung Wah Group of […]
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HF: Cheoy Lee Shipyard operated at Penny’s Bay, Lantau from 1964 to April 2001. The company was founded in 1870 in Shanghai by the Lo family. In 1936 when the Japanese Imperial Army [invaded China] the yard was moved to British-controlled Hong Kong, where the Lo family thought the yard would be safe. But the Japanese took over Hong Kong, too, […]
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York Lo: South China Tea Corporation (華南茶業) and “Cocktail Tea” (鷄尾茶) Left: Outdoor advertising for South China Tea’s “Cocktail” covering the building which housed the Mayfair Studio in Kowloon (likely 3 Saigon Street); Right: a South China Tea Corp’s “China Beauty” Chinese green tea tin (Worthpoint) While the family of Southeast Asian tycoon Eu Tong-sen might be best known in […]
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HF: Here’s another in our series of Ginger Factories from the late 19th century and early 20th. I cannot find out much more about this company and would like to know when it was established. Also about Wong Chi Chau mentioned in this article. And the company of which he was the compradore of, Messrs. Alvares & Co. The article […]
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HF: It is worth looking at the Hong Kong Naturalist – “a quarterly illustrated journal principally for Hong Kong and South China” which was published from Jan 1930 until Feb 1941. The journal contain articles on a variety of subjects of interest to us including, oysters, Kowloon waterworks, agriculture in the New Territory [sic] and a couple of mountains where mines are mentioned. […]
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York Lo: Shui Hwa Watch (瑞華表行) Ad of Shui Hwa Watch in 1977 listing all the brands it was sole agent of (WKYP HK Yearbook, 1977) From the 1950s to the 1980s, Shui Hwa Watch was one of the leading watch dealers in Hong Kong, best known for being the sole agents for famous Swiss brands such as Piaget (伯爵表, […]
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This article started life as Q+A 28. New information – see IDJ Jan 2016. Vicky Chan, Lamma resident, asks where Village Vehicles, more usually known as VVs (though there are apparently VWs) are made. She suggests they are so simple in design that the answer must be somewhere in Hong Kong. Is she right? And if so where exactly? They […]
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York Lo: Chow Deuk Sang and Aurora Chow When it comes to prominent HK jewelers with the surname Chow, the first two that comes to most people’s mind are Chow Tai Fook and Chow Sang Sang, which also happens to be the top two chains by the number of stores. From the 1940s to the 1960s, there were two other […]
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