HF: We currently have over 1,500 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 need […]
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HF: Further to Dan Waters article “A Joss-stick Mill in Tsuen Wan” published August 26 2013 and “A water powered tilt-hammer incense mill” published 17th November 2013. Here is another photograph sent in by IDJ. It’s not dated. The title is “Wooden Water-wheel in an old village building near Tsuen Wan”. This may well be an incense mill. Does anyone know if […]
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Recollections of a Visit To a Joss-stick Mill in Tsuen Wan By Dan Waters The manufacturing of Joss Sticks in Hong Kong is believed to go back at least four centuries. It has also been suggested that the primary industry in incense trees gave Hong Kong its name — namely Heung Kong, meaning ‘fragrant harbour’. But there are few incense trees […]
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Swire’s story begins with a young man setting off to seek his fortune as a result of family bankruptcy. While this is not a classic rags-to-riches tale, resilience in the face of adversity was a characteristic that was to stand the firm he founded in good stead on more than one occasion over the following 200 years. The founder of […]
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HF: Tam Kon Shan Road runs for a couple of kilometres along the north coast of Tsing Yi island. The western kilometre is home to about twenty shipyards – the largest number of this industry, I believe, remaining in Hong Kong. Repairing and maintenance not shipbuilding. On 13th December 2014 I visited Kwong Tat Loong Shipyard (Brothers) Ltd. and took […]
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HF: THe Audit Commission’s Report 41, published in October 2003 includes chapter 8 titled, The acquisition and clearance of shipyard sites. This appears to have been undertaken on behalf of the Lands Department and Civil Engineering Departments. The report is dated 18th October 2003. The report begins with a summary which states: The Government may acquire land for public purposes […]
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Hugh Farmer was recently on holiday in Burma (in 2013) and visited the town of Pathein (Bassein) where he visited the Shwe Sar Umbrella Workshop which produces exquisite hand-made parasols. He mentioned this to group member Malcolm Morris, who lived in Hong Kong in the 1970s. Malcolm remembers his mother using a parasol which he thinks she bought in the […]
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It’s 1952, summer presumably, two policemen are walking into Lock Road, TST. Mohan’s Tailors is on the left, well known at time and I believe continuing on to today. Pretty obviously the subject of interest is the person in the centre. What is he or she carrying? What was it used for? Why was it being moved around TST? It’s […]
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IDJ has unearthed an article first posted in June 1931 in the Far Eastern Review titled Military Aircraft in China. The article mentions the Aviation Department of Arnhold & Co Ltd (“agents for the Blackburn Aircraft Company”). This supplements information we have posted in recent articles on both companies, linked below. The article begins: Military Aircraft in China. Of the […]
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Elizabeth Ride has sent the Naval section of a British Army Aid Group (BAAG) Waichow Intelligence Summary (WIS 26) dated 7th April 1943. This covers shipping movements in and out of Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation in World War Two between mid March and mid April 1943. These reports also describes time spent by vessels undergoing repairs and maintenance in a […]
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