York Lo: Great China Match Co. (大中國火柴廠) Great China Match Factory in Peng Chau in 1956 (Land Use Survey, HKU Libraries collection) Founded in 1939, the Great China Match Factory on Peng Chau was once the largest match manufacturer in Hong Kong, with over 1000 workers at its peak in the late 1940s and its “Kowloon” and other brands of […]
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James Chan: R.E. Dietz Company Limited was founded by Mr. Robert Edwin Dietz in New York, USA in 1840 and began manufacturing kerosene lanterns, which are commonly known as hurricane lanterns… …In order to reduce production cost and increase market share, Dietz relocated its production facilities from New York, U.S.A. to Hong Kong in 1956 and subsequently from Hong Kong […]
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York Lo: The Forgotten Jewish American Tycoons behind the HK Plastic Flowers Industry Plastic flowers production in HK in the 1960s In the late 1950s, artificial flowers made out of plastic were in high demand in the West and Hong Kong emerged as the world’s leading producer of plastic flowers thanks to its significant cost and labor advantage. Starting with […]
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Tymon Mellor: Construction of the Kowloon Canton Railway included the excavation of the Beacon Hill tunnel through the Kowloon hills. At the time, the tunnel at 7,212ft or 2,198m was the longest tunnel in China and the fifth longest tunnel outside Europe. The southern and northern portals were remote from existing villages and sickness among the workers was common. To […]
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Stephen Davies: An interesting question to which I don’t know the answer, is what the provenance is of the gasometer that still stands (and I believe is in use for stand-by storage) back from the Tin Wan Praya waterfront just outside the Aberdeen Typhoon Shelter West entrance (on the north shore). I’m fairly sure it’s been there as long as I […]
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York Lo: H P Wu’s full name was Hsin Ping Wu (吳新炳). Born in 1894 and native of Kiangyin in Kiangsu province, he went to Tsinghua and studied in the US as a Boxer Indemnity Scholar, receiving his BS in electrical engineering from Cornell in 1921 and training at General Electric in the US. From 1927 to 1937, he was […]
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York LO: Blood Protection Co (保血有限公司) and Fish brand mosquito incense Left: old package of Blood Protection Co’s Fish mosquito destroyer featuring the portrait of its founder H.L. Sum (right) and his brother/son. Right: Blood Protection Co’s ad from the early 1960s – the tagline reads what’s the point of having money when you cannot protect your blood. The warm […]
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York Lo: Yankee Needle: American Merchants and the development of the Swatow lace industry in China and the garment industry in HK Left: Swatow women working on needlework at Lida Ashmore’s school (Lida Ashmore’s The South China Mission of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, p.94) Right: Lida Ashmore (sitting, second from the right) with her colleagues laying the foundation […]
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York Lo: Leader of the Battery Pack: Hing Wah and Five Rams Batteries Left: Five Rams batteries ad in 1955 (Source: IDJ); Right: Hing Wah’s HK plant in the 1950s (Source: HK Memory) Founded in Canton and expanded to Hong Kong in 1938, Hing Wah Battery Factory (興華電池廠) was one of the oldest and largest players in the batteries industry in […]
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York Lo: The Kings of Industries – the family behind Wearbest Garment in HK and Wha Mei Tobacco in old Shanghai As profiled in many other articles in this group, Shanghainese industrialists played a crucial role in the post-WWII industrialization in HK in fields ranging from textile, plastic, enamelware, construction and many others. In the field of garments, Sieh-Ting King […]
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