HF: Victor Sit Fung Sheun wrote his BA dissertation in 1969 on a subject of great interest. Namely the enormous changes that were taking place in a number of villages in the valley between Castle Peak (ie Tuen Mun) and Yuen Long. The area had been agricultural but by the end of the 60s a large number of factories had […]
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Stephen Davies has been investigating the location of the A King Shipyard in the Causeway Bay Typhoon shelter – 1925 to 1955. Also known as Ah King’s. Further details about the shipyard can be found at http://gwulo.com/search/node/Ah%20King This includes the three locations of the shipyard: 1st Date in the record: on the waterfront, The Praya in Wanchai, today’s Johnston Road 2nd 1925 – […]
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HF: The SCMP published an article on 17th May 2015, Systematic problems facing attempts to preserve Hong Kong’s heritage. The article begins, “In fast-paced metropolitan Hong Kong, it is easy to forget the past, but a recent slew of underground and underwater discoveries have reminded people that their city has a long history. A stone tablet on the island of […]
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New information: A Kung Ngam 1846, “The only produce of Hong Kong, for exportation, is granite…it employs many hands, a great number of boats, each about 70 to 100 tons, and capital. There are seldom less than a hundred of the above craft which monthly leave this place with a full cargo for the interior; and it is considered a […]
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Tymon Mellor has sent this 1957 map showing a brick works just NE of Brick Hill (Nam Long Shan) the southern part of which is now Ocean Park amusement park. The entrance to Ocean Park and the start of the cable car which takes you alongside Brick Hill is itself just NE of what was once the brick works. Tymon […]
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James Chan: I thought this map would be useful. Here is a snipped version of HK Island and Kowloon. The full version can be seen in the link below. This shows rather small maps of reclamation development: a) up to 1887 b) 1888-1924 c) 1925-1945 d) 1946-1967 e) 1968-1976 f) 1977-1996 This article was first posted on 21st March 2015. […]
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HF: Craig Mitchell has kindly allowed me access to his collection of WW2 photographs of Hong Kong. Among these are two USAAF aerial images of a bombing raid on an oil depot in Lai Chi Kok which took place on 2nd September 1943. Standard Oil had a depot there at the start of the war according to this account. (1) […]
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HF: The SCMP of 12th December 2014 contained a full page article, Bazaar Behaviour. This outlines the decline in the number of hawkers markets and discusses the view that “public policy over the years has served to concentrate retail activity in sanitised malls.” The article mentions:- – there were about 40 such bazaars in the 1970s. – that the number […]
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Thomas Ngan and HF: Quarrying and Stone Breaking have a very long history in Hong Kong. Firstly providing dressed building stone and later aggregate for concrete. Before 1966 there were many small ‘permit’ quarries scattered across Hong Kong. These mainly produced dressed building stone. The last of these quarries closed in 1974 after which only larger, licenced quarries were in […]
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HF: The extraordinary Kowloon Walled City had been completely demolished by April 1994. Here are a selection of sources from which to gather an insight into the settlement, its residents and what went on inside what was reputed to have been the most densely populated place on Earth. a) http://cityofdarkness.co.uk/category/the_book/ This well known book by Ian Lambot and Greg Girard […]
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