Category: Queries + Answers

Tymon Mellor: While researching mines in Hong Kong, I came across this newspaper article from the Hong Kong Daily Press, dated the 12th October, 1889, on the discovery of a new mineral find by Mr J Grant Smith. The mineral ore was exposed following a storm the previous May and considered to be “a payable mine”. The location is described as […]

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 […]

TM Lee is well known in camera and photographic circles as he was the creator of the Hong Kong manufactured Holga Camera. However there is very little biographical information about Mr Lee. He was born around 1930. He was employed as factory manager in HK by the Japanese camera manufacturer Yashica from 1966 for a few years. He later started […]

Ian Wolfe posted this image of this signboard on flikr which he suggests might have been a small teaching establishment probably run by craftsmen in 70s, for those who were fascinated by the radio electronics world. He has translated the sign which certainly suggests Alice was an educational establishment of some form. Ian adds in an email to the Group that […]

Our Q+A 20 about George U. Sands asks for information about three HK companies he was involved in. One of these was the Novelty Iron Works. Can you provide information about the NIW which has several tantalising mentions in dispatches but no solid career record? Harvard University Library has a collection of Sands’ business records which consist of account books, letter […]

HF: The SCMP of 30th January 2016 contained a letter from R Coates of Lai Chi Kok about the HK Government’s current and future major infrastructure proposals. The letter says, “…I look forward to the rebirth of the Lei Yue Mun suspension bridge project, aborted in the 1970s because the towers would have interfered with Kai Tak radar”. I would […]

HF: Our article, American Marine Ltd boatyard, Junk Bay, includes: “More than 50 years ago, on Mok Cheong Street [Ma Tau Wai/To Kwa Wan] next to Eastern Cotton Mills, was a soft drink bottling plant managed by the founder of American Marine, Robert Newton. In the 1950s, Robert Newton already in his late 50s, an age when many people start to think […]

HF: Can you fill out this minimalistic skeleton up to 1931? In true wikipedia-style verification is needed… 1877 The telephone was introduced in Hong Kong one year after Alexander Graham Bell patented his invention 1882 The first manual telephone exchange was opened by the Oriental Telephone and Electric Company (東方電話電力公司) unknown date: the Oriental Telephone and Electric Company was later renamed […]

Our article, Hong Kong Paint manufacturing companies – from early 1930s, includes a possible paint factory on Tsing Yi island. Billy Clarke wrote to the Indhhk Group in May 2015 asking if we had any information about this location and what was manufactured there. He linked a HK Urbex series of photos and a video, (taken, I think, in June 2014), […]

David Williams has been in touch: I am a writer interested in building stone. I have been researching the Parrott Building in San Francisco. Built in 1852, it was one of the first stone buildings in the city. I know that the builders of the building were Chinese and have read that the stone came from Hong Kong. One source says that the […]