York Lo: Fred Westphal – the American Oil Taipan from New Orleans who helped to power Hong Kong Fred Westphal (right) with Governor Sir David Trench (centre) and Lord Lawrence Kadoorie (left) at the opening of Peninsula Electric Power’s Tsing Yi power station in 1969. Source: HK Heritage On October 11, 2016, Frederick Clement Westphal Jr passed away in his native […]
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IDJ: The Bank of China Tower houses the headquarters of Bank of China Hong Kong. Designed by Ieoh Ming Pei, the 70-storey building’s height is 315 meters with two masts reaching 369 meters. Construction began in 1985 and was completed in 1989, with its official opening on 17 May 1990. It was the first building outside of North America to […]
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HF: “Henry B. Endicott joined Butterfield & Swire as Head Shipping Clerk in February 1873, after being headhunted from the US firm of Augustine Heard & Co. An American and a fluent Chinese speaker, he was known to have excellent connections throughout the chartering and shipping community, and John Samuel Swire believed he was the right man for what he […]
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HF:The engineerng consultancy Binnie & Partners, though British, has had a close connection to Hong Kong through several large-scale engineering projects. From the late 1990s it has been part of the multi-national consultancy Black and Veatch which has its HK office in Ngau Tau Kok. Geoffrey Binnie is closely associated with the constuction of what was, on completion, known as […]
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York Lo: Lee Yat-Ngok, the Local Printing Press Company and the Development of the Hong Kong Printing Industry Passengers on the upper deck of westbound trams passing by Wanchai would recall that the first floor of 48-50 Johnston Road was the home to both the Hong Kong Printers Association (香港印刷業商會, hereafter referred to as “HKPA”) and the Hong Kong Hok Shan […]
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York Lo: Chi-Chung Yin (C. C. Yin, 尹致中, 1902-1988) – King of Needles Born into a poor family in the farming village of Laiyang (萊陽) in Shandong Province in 1902, C. C. Yin started working at the age of 13 in nearby Japanese occupied Tsingtao (which was occupied by the Japanese between 1914 and 1922) as an office boy at a […]
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By York Lo For almost half a century stretching from the 1920s to the 1960s, the most popular casual footwear brand in Asia was Fung Keong (馮強). First manufactured in Canton in 1920, and later in Hong Kong and Malaysia, Fung Keong rubber sole canvas shoes had massive appeal during those years of economic hardship due to its affordability and are permanently etched […]
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Dodwell & Company (天祥洋行) was one of the leading British merchant firms, active in China and Japan during the 19th and 20th century. It was a direct rival to Jardine, Matheson & Co. “It was established in 1858 when W R Adamson and Company (silk dealers) set up in London, with its head office in Shanghai and branches in Hong Kong, […]
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York Lo: In 2013, the Ford Motor Company released a 1924 letter which Sun Yat-sen sent to Henry Ford inviting him to open up a plant in south China – the bearer of the letter was a Chinese American merchant named Ng Jim Kai (a.k.a. Ng Tung Kai 吳東啟, 1859-1935). [1] A major financial backer of Sun Yat-sen for over […]
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York Lo: For decades after the War, the plastic industry and two closely related industries – toy and artificial flower manufacturing had played an important role in the industrial growth of Hong Kong and thanks to the efforts of pioneering entrepreneurs and the hard work of an industrious labor force, Hong Kong had emerged from nothing to become a top player […]
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