Elizabeth Ride has sent these BAAG reports including the map about Hip Tung Wo Engineering Works. Thanks to Mark Regan for retyping the reports out – some of which are barely legible as can be seen with the first one. If you could help the Group by doing the occasional typing please contact us. This also aids reader’s ability to search. There […]
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Robin Selby has sent a link to Transport by Aerial Ropeways, published in what appears to be a 1899 reprint of a special edition of the Engineering Times, London. Robin had previously been in contact about his great-uncle Thomas Selby (1866-1937) who was at one time mate of the Cutty Sark, captain of another ship, went on to work for the The Indo-China Steam […]
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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: The company was founded in 1949 as the Star Brush Factory and later renamed Star Industrial Company Ltd. In the year it started it participated in the 7th Exhibition of Chinese Products with a booth mainly displaying brush products including toothbrushes, hair combs and coat brushes. (1) Within a decade [of its founding], Star had expanded its line to include […]
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The SCMP of 31st August 2016 has an article about the Mill6 Foundation, a “non-profit arts and cultural institution” run by property developer Nan Fung Group. “The foundation is working on a heritage conservation project called The Mills in Tsuen Wan, restoring the former Nan Fung cotton mill in situ. The project is expected to be completed in 2018. [The project […]
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The Yoshida Kōgyō Kabushiki gaisha (YKK Group) is a Japanese group of manufacturing companies. It’s the world’s largest largest zipper/zip manufacturerer but also produces other fastening products, architectural products and industrial machinery. What would later become YKK operated initially as San-es Shokai and was founded by Tadao Yoshida in Higashi Nihonbashi, Tokyo in January 1934. The company was renamed YKK in 1945. YKK has manufacturing facilities […]
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HF: As part of my research into the Amoy Canning Company I came across the account given below. I don’t know what the Hong Kong POWs were fed but good quality canned food seems unlikely… Did the Japanese feed POWs with Amoy “beaned pork” ? Who was this unnamed Englishman? How did the latter procure the soybeans and tin plate[s] […]
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HF: Before 1874, ice was imported [into Hong Kong] by the Tudor Ice Company from America. The sailing ships with the imported ice anchored close to the foot of Ice House Lane [“what was to become Ice House Street”?] and the ice blocks were stored in the government’s Ice Depot. Ice House Street was named accordingly. “In Chinese, Ice House Street is 雪廠街. […]
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