York Lo: Keeping Warm – Nam Wah Industrial (南華實業), maker of polyester blankets and thermal carriers Article about Nam Wah’s thermal carrier for tropical fish. The carrier shown appears to be made for Pan Am (WKYP, 1961-11-1) Recently while browsing old newspapers for research on other topics, I came across three articles (all shown here) about a firm by the […]
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Tymon Mellor: Galena ore, the main source of lead was first discovered at Lin Ma Hang in around 1914. As described in Part 1, a number of attempts were made to commercially exploit the lead ore, but they all failed. That was until Mr Morrison Brown Yung took an interest in the site and introduced modern mining methods to extract […]
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York Lo: Once Upon A Time in Mongkok: Chow Ngai Hing Knitting Factory One of Chow Ngai Hing’s brands – the Horse trademark. In Mongkok, there are four streets which have names there are associated with garments – Yim Po Fong Street (染布房街, dyeing mill street), Hak Po Street (黒布街, black cloth street), Pak Po Street (白布街,white cloth street) and Sai […]
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York Lo has sent the following information about William MacGregor Smith. He was the Smith in Wahee, Smith & Co which in turn became The China Sugar Refinery. Smith is buried in HK cemetery – the tombstone states he was 76 (and was erected in 1907) and was from Scotland. On page 50 of Carl Smith’s book Chinese Christians there is […]
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Sky Shuttle Helicopters Limited ( 空中快線直升機公司) is a helicopter service operator based in Macau. Formerly known as Helicopters Hong Kong Limited and before that as East Asia Helicopters, it operates helicopter routes between Macau, Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Sky Shuttle employs over 250 people. East Asia Airlines Limited was established in July 1988 and Macau-Hong Kong services commenced in November 1990 by using two Bell 222 helicopters with six […]
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IDJ has kindly sent the following newspaper article about the Hong Kong (or sometimes Hongkong) Rope Manufacturing Company planning a rope producing factory in Singapore. Thanks to SCT for proofreading the retyped article. That work is now going ahead with the establishment of a rope works in Singapore was disclosed by Mr G.E. Marden, MC, in his statement to shareholders […]
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York Lo: R.P. de La Sala – the Global Shipping and Industrial Magnate from HK Left: R.P. de La Sala (Brazilian immigration record, 1958); Right: Manners’ “West Breeze” as the first British vessel passing through the Suez in 1957 (British Pathe) Robert Perez de La Sala (1908-1967, hereafter referred to as R.P., his Chinese obituary listed his Chinese name as 黎醒亞), […]
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York Lo: United Rubber Works (聯合膠廠) United Rubber Works ad in 1949 (HK Scouting Gazette, 1949) United Rubber Works was one of the five biggest rubber product manufacturers in HK in the late 1940s with ties to several figures discussed earlier in different articles. Formed in 1946 (although the firm was not incorporated until March 1947) with HK$1 million in […]
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Stephen Davies: My favourite early, short-lived, Hong Kong shipyard is the German Ulderup and Schlüter, which only seems to have operated from c.1900-1914. It had the actual shipyard in Shamshuipo and an office at 21 Connaught Rd, Central. They became the local agents for the Swedish Bolinder marine diesels (Bolinder Rohölmotoren – strictly semi-diesels) – two strokes that for the first […]
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York Lo: Fung Yuen-hon (馮元侃) and Wai Yuen Cheong (惠元昌) Left: Fung Yuen-hon in front of the Wai Yuen Cheong sign (HKET); Right: Shaolin Temple brand medicine label – address listed as 42A Bonham Strand West and stating that pregnant ladies should avoid consuming. In 2014, the 96 years old Fung Yuen-hon (馮元侃) decided to shut down Wai Yuen Cheong, the […]
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