HF: “In the 1960s Harold’s Halvorsen’s son Harvey became the company designer [of Lars Halvorsen Sons Pty. Ltd] and in 1975 he formed a joint venture between Lars Halvorsen Sons Pty. Ltd. and Joseph Kong, former General Manager of American Marine Company, in Hong Kong to design, build and market a new range of pleasure boats worldwide. The company was called […]
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York Lo wrote a short biography of Kwok Tak-seng included in Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography. Kwok is probably best known as one of the founders and chairman of Sun Hung Kai Enterprises which became Sun Hung Kai Properties. However before this he was involved in Hung Cheong Import & Export Ltd which was the HK agent for YKK Zippers, […]
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HF: In his book, The Atlas: Archaeology of an Imaginary City, a mixture of fact and fiction about Hong Kong in the past and future, Dung Kai Cheung, Louis, writes about Sugar Street (糖街) in Causeway Bay. Dung recounts the local legend that the Hong Kong Mint, based there from 1866 to 1868, failed because, in spite of melted silver being […]
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Yolande van Daatselaar from Delft in the Netherlands has recently been in touch. She says she is the proud owner of a beautiful camphorwood chest, with pearl inlay, bought by her grandfather in Hong Kong during one of his trips as a sailor on the Holland Amerika Line some time between 1946 and 1960. She doesn’t know exactly when. Yolande wonders […]
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Robert Taylor was manager of the Green Island Cement Company from about the late 1920s until the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and again for a short period after its liberation. He was born on 2nd June 1888 and died in January 1974 in his 86th year. Immediately prior to the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong he was a volunteer […]
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HF: It’s hard to walk along Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui these days without being accosted by someone offering the ubiquitous copy watches or gentlemen’s tailor sir. There may be several of the latter dotted around TST, Wanchai and Central but as Stuart Heaver recently wrote in an article for the SCMP the number of tailors in Hong Kong has suffered […]
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IDJ: When Cheung Wah Shipbuilding & Engineering Company was the labour supply contractor for the construction of Castle Peak Power Station they had to bring in several hundred and later probably thousands of workers daily to what was then a remote site. Eventually the ARGOS Bus Co was created by Cheung Wah using a fleet of secondhand double-deckers from the UK […]
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HF: This article is somewhat rough and ready and is drawn from different sources. If you can add to or correct information provided please contact the Group. Stephen Davies: A WW2 shipyard based in Yau Tong Bay, the Chung Wah Shipbuilding & Engineering Company – started as Hoi Wong Co. Ltd. in 1966 or Chung Wah Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd […]
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Maureen Fan left a comment below Carles Brasó Broggi’s article Shanghai Spinners: Pioneers of Hong Kong’s Industrialisation. This reads in part: Thank you for your informative article. My grandfather Robert Fan Wenzhao (1893-1979) was the architect who designed the HK Spinners factory at Cheung Sha Wan, including the workers dormitories, a dining hall, a recreation area, basketball and volleyball courts and […]
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IDJ has sent the following article which he has kindly reformatted for inclusion here. Please note the locations of the images in this version have been changed from those in the original article. From The Railway Magazine, November 1983. Those who knew the British section of the Kowloon – Canton Railway before its modernisation would scarcely recognise it now. A […]
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