York Lo: Shanghainese Builders in Hong Kong (Part Two) – Hsin Chong and Hsin Heng In 1928, two aspiring builders from Ningbo – Godfrey Yeh and Johan Zee – co-founded Hsin Heng Construction in Shanghai and quickly made a name in the industry with projects such as the famous Chien-tang River bridge in Hangzhou. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese […]
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Antonia Cheung has already kindly sent information and images which appear in two articles. The first was about her father, Chang Don Chien 張敦潛, chief engineer South China Iron Works, 1948-1968. And the second about the company, The Story of the South China Iron Works as told by Chang Don Chien 張敦潛. Both are linked below. Here Antonia provides a list of the […]
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HF: In 1980 there were 1,187 registered watch factories in Hong Kong during a period when it was one of the largest producers and exporters of watches and clocks in the world. The origin of watchmaking here however possibly goes back 170 years and started very soon after the colony was ceded. Carl Smith wrote a lengthy article, The German […]
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Alexander Booth MacDonald: I stayed between Kowloon Docks, Hung Hom & Tai Kok Tsui when I was a young boy say between 5 to 10 years of age. My now deceased father, Alexander Macdonald served with the Kowloon Dockyard as a Dockyard Police Inspector from 1960 to 1965 when he tendered his resignation. Alexander has kindly sent the following images. […]
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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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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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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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