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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M+ is the new museum for visual culture in Hong Kong, as part of the West Kowloon Cultural District, focusing on 20th and 21st century art, design and architecture and moving image. It currently has an exhibition, Shifting Objectives: Design from the M+ Collection which will run until 5th February 2017 which includes a small section on industrial products made in […]
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HF: Louis Ha and and the late Dan Waters kindly gave permission to post their article, HK lighthouses + men who manned them, on our website. This was originally published in the RASHKB Journal, Volume 41, 2001 linked below. The following is an extract from the article: Green Island Lighthouse started to operate on 1st July 1875, about three months after […]
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HF: “Newspaper hawker licences are no longer being issued, the government confirmed Wednesday. Amid the impending demise of dai pai dong – the practice of selling cheap food in open-air stalls – Secretary for Food and Health Dr Ko Wing-man said the government had not issued newspaper hawker licences “under normal circumstances” since 2000 and had no plans to issue […]
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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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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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HF: “The bazaar was set up in the 1970s when the government moved hawkers off nearby streets to its site opposite Sham Shui Po Police Station. More than 100 textile vendors once crammed into the site, which resembles a small squatter village with its patchwork roof of corrugated metal, plastic sheets and tarpaulins. Although they are set out along a […]
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Stephen Davies recently wrote an article for the SCMP about maritime street names in Hong Kong. He noted, “considering Hong Kong is one of the world’s great ports, street names with maritime connections are remarkably few – no more than 10 per cent of the total. But that is enough, when loaded into a database and tested for patterns, to add […]
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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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In our Queries and Answers 5 Eric Spain had an enquiry about salt production in Mui Wo. He remembers seeing some RAF aerial photographs which showed salt pans there. [presumably immediately before, during or shortly after WW2?]. Frank Watson and Namussi added information to Q+A 5 which is linked below. HF: Further information can be found in a post I made on gwulo.com […]
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