Category: Queries + Answers

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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), […]

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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 […]

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HF: This British Army Aid Group report  of 1944, mentions a “rumour” of a mine on or near Castle Peak. Tsing Shan is the name of the well-known monastery located at the eastern foot of the mountain. I have not come across a mine in this area. However the map below shows four abandoned mines (green squares) and four Former […]

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