Here are a few more surprises from my recent visit to the UK's National Archives:

Naturalisation certificates, 1939-40

I'd asked to view what I thought was a single sheet of paper with details of a Mr Milenko, but instead I was handed this sizeable book [HO 334/254]:

It contains copies of 500 naturalisation certificates received from around the British Empire in 1939 and 1940. Luckily the certificates from Hong Kong stand out in two ways, so it's easy to flick through the pages and spot them. First they're printed on slightly smaller paper, so your finger feels when a Hong Kong certificate passes by. Second they're printed on blue-coloured paper, unlike the rest which are on standard white paper.

Here's the first one from Hong Kong:

It's the certificate forMs Jessica May Wong, dated 14th March, 1939.

We learn that Jessica Wong was working as a school teacher, and living at 11, Cumberland Road in Kowloon Tong. Her father, Charles Wong, had died, but her mother Florence Lucy Ching was still alive. Jessica was aged 24, having been born in 1914 at Shekki, Heungshan in China. She swore her oath of allegiance the following week and became a British Citizen on the 20th of March, signing her name as Jessie M. Wong.

So the certificates are interesting from a couple of angles. First they give a glimpse of the person on that date, and also give details of their parents, which is invaluable information for anyone researching family history. But the cerificate also asks the question: why did this person want to change their country of citizenship? It's not a step to be taken lightly, so why did Jessica want to make the switch from Chinese to British citizenship? 

The next certificate is for "Akwien Bertus Rudolf Tjon Kwie Sem commonly known as Edwin Tjon." As the long string of names suggests, he was born to parents from different countries. Unusually for the time, it was his father who was Chinese and his mother who was European. She was a Dutch woman, and Edwin was born in Dutch Guiana in 1910.

Next is the certificate for Florence Lucy Wong. If that name sounds familiar, it's because she was the mother of Jessica Wong, mentioned above. Florence was born in MacKay, Queensland, to father Charles Ching. "MacKay" and the family name "Ching" rang a bell, and sure enough Florence was the sister of Harry Ching, the SCMP editor whose diary of wartime Hong Kong has been so interesting to read.

Then I have to apologise - I was so busy flicking through the pages and clicking the camera's shutter, I didn't pay attention to whether the camera had focused or not. So several pages are too blurred to read clearly - a lesson to remember for my next visit.

The next page in focus is another name I recognise, Vitaly Leonid Veriga, usually known as Vic. Here's a photo of him that Bob Tatz sent in previously:

Vic was living at 304 Nathan Road, and working as a Police Officer. His father and mother had Russian Nationality, but Vic was born in Kirin, North China in 1911, and gave his nationality as "No Nationality". In this case the attraction of British Citizenship was obvious, as Vic was stateless without a passport, which made for a precarious existence.

Many of the other men listed in this book have the same background: born to Russian parents but without any nationality of their own. Their family story often included flight from Russia after the revolution, living in Harbin and other cities in northern China, a spell in Shanghai, and eventually reaching Hong Kong.

Among these men, the largest group were Police Officers like Vic. They include:

• Vasily Alexandrovitch Elberg,
• Alexander Paul Zaremba,
• Fedor Longinovich Zadorin, and
• Constantin Petrovich Sherevera

The Russian community in Hong Kong was very diverse though, as shown by other certificates in the book:

• Nicholas Michael Kresnoperoff, Horse Trainer living at the Jockey Club Stables
• Mark Akimovitch Yaroogsky-Erooga, commonly known as Mark Akim, a registered Medical Practitioner living at the Queen Mary Hospital
• Vadim Bonch-Osmolovsky, commonly known as Vadim Bonch and working as an Electrical Engineer at Kowloon Docks
• Boris Georgievich Milenko, working as an Electrical Engineer and living at 377, Nathan Road

The best known of the group is a man who became a British Citizen on the 1st of July, 1940: Solomon Matveevich Bard, better known as Solomon Matthew Bard.

These certificates are the start of many interesting stories. On a future visit I'll photograph it again to get a sharper copy.

The visit to the archives wasn't all about unexpected surprises. Some of the hoped-for information was also good to read:

The original Saiwan Hill Redoubt

Back in December we visited the old Saiwan Hill Redoubt, and as we walked around the walls we saw this staircase leading up to what looked like the old entrance:

It's all blocked up now, as at some point the redoubt had been converted into a water reservoir. I was curious to know what it looked like originally, so thank you to Stephen Davies who gave me the National Archives reference for a plan of the site [WO 78/5352]. Here's how it looked in 1895, shown with its old spelling "Sywan Hill Redoubt":

The steps and arch in the modern photo are coloured dark-gray in the bottom left corner of the plan. They're shown at the head of "Footpath from Lyemun", and were the only entrance to the redoubt at that time.

The rusty iron tank above HKU

I also hoped to find information that would confirm the early use of cast iron water tanks in Hong Kong, and also tell us when the tank above HKU might have been installed.

A search for Hong Kong water tank surprisingly turned up something useful, an 1850 map [MFQ 1/962/7] showing cast iron water tanks on military land:

The key says "Present cast iron Tanks and Water Pipes . . . . coloured blue". They're in the bottom left corner. Here's a close-up, showing they are octagonal, just like the tank at HKU:

Another set of documents [WO 55/2962] includes this Plan of the Cantonment drawn in 1853:

The four tanks mentioned above are shown, so they were still around in 1853. AND, down in the bottom-right corner is another set of four tanks built to the same design!

So that's plenty of evidence that eight-sided cast-iron water tanks were used in Hong Kong's early colonial years. Next, when was the tank installed at the HKU site?

A detailed plan of the University site from 1910 [MPG 1/1209/2] confirms the tank hadn't been built then:

All the clues point to it having been erected sometime during the late 1920s / 1930s. While I was away, Moddsey and StephenD discussed the water shortages in Hong Kong around that time, which led to additional water tanks being erected. That is currently our best guess for when and why the tank above HKU was erected.

I hope you've enjoyed this virtual visit to the National Archives (if you missed part 1 last week, you can click here to read it).

When you're next in London they're well worth a visit in person, or if you're in Hong Kong you can head along to our local archives at the Public Records Office in Kwun Tong. Please let us know what surprises you find!

(This article originally appeared in the April 1977 edition of the Peninsula Group magazine, and is reproduced here with their permission.)

He lives in a large house in Kowloon Tong, one of Hong Kong’s fashionable residential districts, watching his plants grow and talking to his parrot who, in-between squawks, utters a civilized “hello”. He’s a big man, hearty despite his 85 years. And he smokes two packs of cigarettes a day. “But I don’t inhale,” he says. “It’s not good for you.”

Clifton James Triggs was, perhaps, The Peninsula’s longest-staying, non-paying resident. As Chief Engineer of The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd., he and his family lived “for some 35 years” in The Peninsula. If anyone knows The Pen, its ghosts, its every nook and cranny, and those of The Repulse Bay Hotel and the old Hongkong and Peak Hotels, Mr Triggs does. “My memory is not good,” he apologises, occasionally referring to a list he has made of important events during his career with the company. In fact, his memory is very good.

He remembersJames Taggart, the company’s director for many years before his retirement shortly before the Second World War, as a kind, generous man with a fine mind. “Because he was a Scotsman,” he adds with a smile. Mr Triggs is Scottish, too, in part. His mother was Maori and Scottish and his father, English. He was born in 1892, in Mandalay, Burma, and spent 14 years there before being sent to Dumbarton, Scotland, to study engineering. In 1924, while working on a merchant ship as First Engineer, he met Mr Taggart, who was sailing to Indonesia to purchase French liqueurs for the hotels in Hong Kong. “I got to know him,” he recalls, “and he offered me a job”.

“’How much are you getting?’ he asked me.

“’$2,000.’”

“’Suppose I double it?’ he asked. “Will you work for me?’

“”Certainly, sir,’ I said, and he gave me his card and said I could stay in The Hongkong Hotel when I got off the ship. When I arrived in Hong Kong I had no money. He was so kind to me. Gave me a month’s salary in advance and showed me where I could stay. Of course, I showed him I could work, too.” Thus began an excellent working relationship.

After one year, Mr Triggs was made Chief Engineer of the Company and Mr Taggart doubled his pay. “He was a good man,” says Mr Triggs. “Do you know, when he retired, he gave me 500 shares in the company. I still have them today. Though now, of course they’re worth much more than they were then.”

The year Mr Triggs was made Chief Engineer, 1925, was an eventful one for Hong Kong and The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd. “There was a big strike that year,” Mr Triggs recalls. Hong Kong labourers, believing they could get higher wages in China, quit their jobs and attempted to cross the border. “When some of our staff walked out I remember being in my quarters and finding out there was no one in Repulse Bay to manage to heating system. I had to find someone and show him how to operate it so the guests could have hot water.” That was a minor event for the company compared to a fire the same year that destroyed a good part of the old Hongkong Hotel. “That used to be the hotel in Hong Kong.” Mr Triggs remembers. “All the big shots in town would meet and entertain there. After the fire, it was renovated and they made an even better hotel of it, with a roof garden and modern architecture.

c.1922 The Hongkong Hotel

The pride of the company, however, was no doubt The Majestic Hotel in Shanghai. Sent up there to repair the floating dance floor in the ballroom, Mr Triggs remembers it as a “beautiful hotel. Its art and designs were gorgeous and most expensive. And it had a lovely garden with beautiful flowers. It used to be called The Paradise of the East.”

In late 1925, The Peninsula was nearing completion when labour unrest in Shanghai led to strikes against foreign-owned business. The Coldstream Guards were sent out to protect British interests and they commandeered The Peninsula before it had the chance to open. “When they handed the hotel back to us,” says Mr Triggs, “we practically had to completely renovate. I think they must have kept their guns in the bathtubs, which had to be replaced on all floors. And the army boots were very rough on the floors. The army paid for the repairs, but it took some time before they left and the hotel opened in 1928.

“That was a day!” he reminisces. “December 11th, 1928. They made more money that day than they ever expected to make. People came in to buy drinks and food. A lot of the food had been imported. Everyone was enjoying it.”

An architect's drawing of The Peninsula's facade.

The Peninsula under construction in 1924.

During the Second World War, the Japanese occupation army took over The Peninsula and The Repulse Bay Hotel. Mr Triggs meanwhile moved his family out of The Peninsula and into his sister-in-law’s house on Hong Kong Island. “When the Japanese took over,” he recalls, “I went home to stay put and after one week they came up and took me in a truck to The Peninsula with bayonets all around me. They were very nice to me. They knew I was shivering in my pants. They showed me the refrigeration system. A very nice officer drew his sword and saluted me. I thought he was going to cut off my head. But instead he said to me, in perfect English, ‘You see this machinery was damaged by somebody. I want you to make it right.’ I said yes and then he became very friendly. He was very stern at the start.

“So I examined the machinery. I told him the material I wanted and got all the machinery running in one week’s time – the refrigeration, plumbing, sewerage had all been damaged. I worked for them for one year. But they didn’t trust me. Wherever I went, they always had a guard go with me."

After a year, Mr Triggs got permission to go with his family to Macau, where he spent the remainder of the war working as an independent engineer. When the Japanese had gone, he returned to Hong Kong, and to the Company.

One of the Company’s casualties from the war was The Peak Hotel, which once stood near where the Peak Tower now stands. Mr Triggs remembers it as a very comfortable hotel, with fire places in every room, resembling an old English home. It had to be abandoned during the occupation because of the heavy shelling it had undergone during the fighting. After the war, the property was sold and the building torn down.

Mr Triggs remembers Hong Kong’s labour strike of 1962, when he had to recruit his wife and her friends to help out in the kitchen of The Peninsula, much to the guests’ delight.

Former Manager of The Peninsula, Mr. Leo Gaddi, placed a 
chef's hat on Mr. Trigg's head as he put the finishing touches
on his daughter's birthday cake in the Hotel's kitchen.

He remembers intrigues in the hotels and other events, which seem rosier in retrospect, such as the time a disposal pipe burst over him in The Repulse Bay and he had to make a beeline for the beach.

The charm and graciousness of The Repulse Bay Hotel remain to this day,
​over 20 years after this photograph was taken on the Hotel's Verandah.

In 1968, he fell from a ladder at home and broke his leg. Though the company was still growing, with the construction of the new Hongkong Hotel, and needed a man of his experience, it was too difficult for him to manage. After 43 years with the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd., Mr Triggs retired.

Thanks to the late Dan Waters for holding on to these old magazines, to Annemarie for finding them a new home, to Phil for scanning and transcribing the article, and for The Peninsula for letting us give the article a second lease of life here on Gwulo.

If you remember Mr Triggs, please let us know in the comments below!

Photos, maps and memories of Hong Kong's cinema century!

Back to the beginning, here's a map showing Hong Kong's cinemas at the end of the first decade:

1910

[Subscribers: if you can't see the map, please view the website version of this page.]

There had been a few cinema shows in Hong Kong before 1900, eg:

The exhibition of the Cinematograph commenced at the City Hall to-day. This wonderful invention is well worth seeing, were it for nothing else but the pictorial representations projected upon the screen by M. Charvet.

Page 2, The China Mail, 1897-04-28

But the first purpose-built cinematographic theatres (ie cinemas) were built in the early 1900s. By 1910, the handful of cinemas shown above were in operation, all concentrated along the north shore of Hong Kong island between Shek Tong Tsui and Central.

1910s memories

The newest cinema in 1910 was The Coronet, remembered in Betty Steel's memoirs:

When we were very young it was a great treat to go to the cinema at the Coronet Theatre. We were allowed to go alone; what a thrill it was to buy our tickets at the box office, and enter the long hall packed with rows of seats, the orchestra in the pit playing stirring marches while waiting for the show to begin. We were impatient for the lights to go out. The films were silent in those days, captions would appear on the screen, and the orchestra played appropriate music throughout. We ate potato chips from the Bluebird Cafe, or sweets, out of paper bags, while watching our favourite film stars: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd; or Pearl White in an episode of "The Lightning Raider".

Early growth was slow. Although several cinemas opened in the 1910s, others closed so that by 1920 the total remained about the same.

1920

The total number may have stayed the same, but one obvious difference is that cinema had crossed the harbour. The Kwong Chee Theatre opened on Kansu Street in Yau Ma Tei, and would become one of Hong Kong's longest-lived cinemas.

Kwong Chee Theatre, by Chris247472

1920s memories

For memories of cinema-going in the 1920s, we turn to Barbara Anslow:

A musical family, the Groves, lived near us, with a violinist brother Mr Dark. They played music in the Queen's Theatre at the silent movies, and once memorably got us seats in a box to see 'Rose Marie' with Joan Crawford. Other films we saw were Jackie Coogan, Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin ones.

Queen's Theatre, by eatsee14

Sometimes we were taken to the little Star Theatre off Mody Road in Kowloon to see Mary Pickford films and Our Gang shorts. Other evenings our parents took us to films (silent of course) on HMS 'Tamar', an old wooden-topped Naval vessel permanently tied up in the Dockyard and used as Fleet Accommodation Barracks. I can feel now the breeze from the overhead punkas, the mid-darkness, and the grownup films which didn't interest us children. Here Mabel once asked Mum 'Why does that man keep smelling the lady's hand?'

1930

By 1930 cinemas had opened in many more locations, spreading east along the island, and north up the Kowloon peninsula. That growth continued over the following ten years. Here are some of the new cinemas from the 1930s:

Central Theatre, by Moddsey

King's Theatre, by uwm

Kwong Ming Theatre, by Chris247472

Oriental Theatre, by uwm

Alhambra Theater, by eternal1966e

By 1940, the first cinema opened outside the Kowloon / Hong Kong island urban areas. Before you scroll down to the map, can you guess where it was?

1940

Cheung Chau!

Today it is considered a small, quiet town, but back in 1940 it was one of the few sizeable towns outside of Kowloon / Hong Kong island.

That Cheung Chau cinema was still standing (just!) when I took this photo in 2015:

Cheung Chau Theatre, by Admin

At that time there was construction work underway at the site. Has anyone visited recently and can tell us how it looks now?

1940s memories

The 1940s were the war years for Hong Kong. Barbara Anslow's diaries cover that time, and often mention visits to the cinema:

• 16 Nov 1941: Arthur and Sid arrived about noon, and we went to King's - 'Buck Privates'.
• 6 Dec 1941: I left work at 7pm, then Arthur and I to Peninsula for tea, then to King's 'My Life with Caroline.'

War was declared on the 8th of December, so that was Barbara's last film for a very long time - with one exception. On the 17th of February 1942, the Japanese put on a film show for the internees in Stanley Camp. Barbara wrote:

• Concert at St Stephens. Wasn't much. First we had to have a picture show by our hosts - Singapore has apparently surrendered.  ((Film show was supposed to be in celebration, mainly a kind of Jap documentary.  A few shots of bottles of beer going along the assembly line - there were nostalgic cheers from the men in the audience at the sight.))

Then that really was the last film Barbara saw until liberation in 1945. Her diary shows she was soon catching up again:

• 6 Sep 1945: Mum, Mabel & I went to P.O. Club where men of 'Kempenfelt'((HMS Kempenfelt, one of the ships that came in with the Fleet)) gave a cinema show - 'Shine on Harvest Moon' - our first films since December 1941 (apart from a short Jap propaganda one in 1942)
• 7 Sep 1945: In evening with Nan Grady and others to cinema show at Hong Kong Hotel - 'Three Comrades' - a terrible choice.  We thought everyone in film looked too fat.
• 8 Sep 1945: Barbara B. & I to hotel, met Mum and Olive, then to King's Theatre, free show. Saw 'The Lodger' and new Gaumont British News, retaking of Rangoon etc; had a glimpse of Princess Elizabeth.

In a letter dated 11 Sep 1945, Barbara explained to a friend why they were so keen to see films:

• Last night we saw our first fairly up-to-date film; it was 'When Irish Eyes are Smiling', and our only regret was that it wasn't in modern costume; of all the films we have been shown this past week not one has been a modern one. We are dying to see what the world of today looks like, fashions, etc.  At present we feel like country cousins; you should have seen us all stare and exclaim the other night when one of the relieving forces produced a perfectly ordinary cigarette lighter!

Another person getting re-introduced to cinema was Michael Wright, recently released from POW camp in Kowloon. He was struck at how run-down Hong Kong was, and as an example he noted "in cinemas there were rats running along the seats in front of you"!

Hong Kong got back on its feet in a surprisingly short time. By 1950, new cinemas had opened including several in the New Territories. Again, it's worth a moment to pause and think where those NT cinemas might have been.

1950

The markers in the top left corner show two cinemas in Yuen Long. In recent years Yuen Long has been overshadowed by the development of larger new towns, but in the early years of the New Territories it was the main market town.

1950s memories

The maps of the cinemas shown in this article build on the work of Peter Yee. You'll see most of the cinemas documented here were added to the site by "OldTimer", Peter's username on Gwulo. I asked Peter what he remembered of Hong Kong cinemas from his childhood in the 1950s:

The first movie I watched was Peter Pan (小飛俠), a fantasy-adventure film by Disney made in 1953.  In those days, going to the movies and beaches were much a part of family outing.  The movie was colourful, interesting and captured my imagination.   It was the start of my cinema experience in Hong Kong.

We would later watch several other movies, one a black-and-white science fiction  飛人大鬧月球國 (literal translation: Flying Man Causing Big Disturbance in the Lunar Kingdom).  In it, the good guy puts on his helmet, straps a rocket on his back, and flies to the sky after making a run from the back of his pick up truck.  The science and cinema technology were crude by today's standard, but they were the frontier of this boy's imagination.

Then I got adventurous, and started to go to theatres alone.  For as little as 20 cents, one could watch re-run Western movies at 5:30 pm. They called it workers off-work entertainment.  The much earlier movies were starring Randolph Scott, and more recent re-runs with Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster; and silent movies too (some later with sounds) starring Charlie Chaplin.  My uncle took me along a few times, and we always could enter on one ticket and we shared the seat.  It was common in the early 1950s and rules were lax in our neighbourhood theatres - Great World, Ming Sing and Good World.

In those early years, English movies did not come with Chinese caption.  To help viewers follow the story, a second operator used a projector to place a one-liner update on the bottom of the screen.  These updates were first hand-written on small glass plates which were stored in a small wooden box, and he would place each plate in the projector at the right moment.

Other favourites were Cantonese operas as they typically contained beautiful songs and duets.  As time went by, interest changed and I would search for more movies. Chinese martial arts movies starring Kwan Tak-hing / 關德興  playing the role of Wong Fei-hung / 黃飛鴻 were entertaining.  The wording in the movie's title could sound violent.  But in those days, foul language was never used, and killing and death were very rare in his movies.  They typically ended with reasoning, repentance and forgiveness.

This was also the time I read Romance of the Three Kingdoms / 三國演義 so any movie related to that period of time would get my attention.  Kwan Tak-hing starred in a dramatization of an apparent event 關公月下赦貂蝉 (literal translation: Under moonlit night General Guan Yu Spares Diaochan).  So obsessed with the drama and the novel, I would go back the next day to the theatre's lobby to listen to the dialogue through the entrance's curtain.

I watched some horror movies, like the one House of Wax (1953) Museum starring Vincent Price which was the early 3-D movie and you needed to wear a "3-D" glass. The Blob (1958) was a bit more scary and it made me sweat in the middle of the night thinking there was a stranger standing next to my bed.  Offsetting these nightmares were comedy movies starring Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, the latter always started to sing when he got into the mood.

To buy a ticket, one would show up at the lobby where a clerk operated in a tiny office.  Through a small window, you point to the seat(s) you like and he would cross it off and place the seat row and number on your ticket.  We could reserve a seat up to three days in advance, or so I thought - I showed my ticket to my classmates in school saying I was going to watch the movie the coming weekend.  One sharp-eye looked at it and uttered "It's for today!" That afternoon, I skipped class and took a ferry to Hong Kong Central.

I ventured near and far to catch the famous movies listed in newspapers, among them Sayonara, Guns of Navarone, The Longest Day, and some arranged by the school I attended.

Such are my memories of the Hong Kong theatres.  In them, I found interesting stories, spectacular scenery, my idols and heroes.  Above all, they were the places where us children and parents spent time together away from home.

1960

New cinemas continued to open, to meet the demands of a young and growing population. Space at home was tight and families were large, making the cinema a popular place to escape to.

I guess readers will recognise many of these cinemas which opened in the 1960s:

Royal Theatre, by Edmond

London Theatre, by OldTimer

Silver Theatre, by OldTimer

East Town Theatre, by OldTimer

Hollywood Theatre, by OldTimer

Golden Valley Theatre, by OldTimer

Jumbo Theatre, by OldTimer

Bonds Theatre, by OldTimer

Paris Theatre, by Chris247472

President Theatre, by OldTimer

Mayfair Theatre, by OldTimer

Universal Theatre, by OldTimer

Rex Theatre, by OldTimer

Jade & Pearl Theatres, by OldTimer

1970

1970s memories

To hear about cinema-going in the 1970s, we turn to the radio. I'd asked listeners to the Hong Kong Heritage radio programme to get in touch with any memories, and "R.O." kindly replied:

I remember that every cinema used to show films at the same times - 12.30, 2.30, 5.30, 7.30, and 9.30 - and foreign films were cut, sometimes drastically, to fit this schedule.

When you bought your ticket, the seat number would be scrawled on it in thick pencil.  It was only legible if you already knew what it said.

The cinema's toilets would be closed a few minutes before the end of the show so that no-one could hang about.

You couldn't leave through the front of the cinema as it would be filling up with people for the next show. You were hustled out through the side and back doors. You generally found yourself in a noisome alley, and people would look about in confusion, wondering which way to go.

There was sometimes almost a party atmosphere in the cinema. Every seat would be filled in a large auditorium with stalls and a circle (called a loge), and a lot of people would take in something to eat and drink, bought from hawkers in front of the cinema. One reason why they wanted the audience out so quickly was that there was sometimes so much litter to clear up.

"How deep is your love?" I remember the audience singing along in Saturday Night Fever.

I remember the first full frontal female nudity in a HK film. The audience gave a great shout!

1980

The maps show these decades were the heyday for Hong Kong's cinemas. Currently we've got approximately 110 cinemas shown on the 1970 and 1990 maps, with a brief dip in numbers in 1980.

1990

This is the time my memories of Hong Kong cinema begin. I first arrived in Hong Kong in 1989, staying for several months, then returned to live here in 1992. I was working in Star House, TST, so my earliest memories are queuing up to get tickets at Ocean Theatre around the corner. It was still the original, larger cinema with separate balcony and stalls at that time.

The person at the counter had a stack of large sheets of paper, one per screening. You'd tell them the show, date and time you wanted, then once they'd found the right sheet you'd point to the seats you wanted. They'd cross out the seats with a thick crayon, scribble the seat numbers on your tickets, and away you'd go.

Later on, telephone booking was introduced, where you'd turn up at the cinema and swipe a credit card to collect the tickets. It cut out the queueng time, but I missed being able to see where the seats were when booking, and how busy the theatre was. That was solved when online booking via the web was introduced, and of course now we can book on our smartphones.

While technology was making it easier to book tickets, it was also making it easier to skip the cinema altogether. When I first arrived in Hong Kong, I was surprised to see how popular Laser Discs were. They were a rarity in the UK where video cassette tapes ruled. Laser discs were especially popular for karaoke, as hopping between songs was almost instant compared with trying to fast forward or rewind a tape. It was a natural progression from Laser Discs to VCDs, which were smaller and cheaper, and again were much more popular here than in the UK. Illegal copies of a wide range of films soon appeared on VCDs, and for a while were widely available in shops around Hong Kong.

The competition took its toll, so by the end of the century cinema's were on the decline. Our last map shows just 50 cinemas in operation, less than half the peak.

2000

I hope you've enjoyed this look back at Hong Kong's cinemas, and that it brings back happy memories. If you'd like to see more information about any of the cinemas on the maps above, please click the marker to see its name, then click the name to visit a page with a description of the cinema and any photos we have for it.

Documenting Hong Kong's cinemas is a work-in-progress, so we'd welcome your help:

• You can see a list of all the cinemas we've got so far. If you spot any mistakes or omissions, please let us know in the comments.
• If you can tell us any stories about Hong Kong's cinemas, please also let us know in the comments below.
• Any photos of cinemas or related memorabilia would also be great to see - here's how to upload a photo to the site.

Finally thanks to everyone who has contributed the information shown here. Special thanks to Peter for all his hard work, and thanks also to the contributors at the Cinema Treasures website, who have been the source for a lot of the dates and addresses for the cinemas. The photos shown come from a variety of sources - you can click on any photo to see its source.

When: The photo was taken in 1902 by R C Hurley [1]. He included it in his book "Views of Hongkong", published the same year.

Where: He was looking west along Praya East. In 1902 that was the Wanchai seafront, today it's called Johnston Road. 

What: We rarely get to see views of this part of Hong Kong's seafront, so we can use this chance to learn more about the area at the turn of the century. Whenever I need to know about the history of this area I turn to Carl Smith's "Wanchai: In Search of an Identity" [2], and I'll be quoting from it often below.

I'm also going to use a couple of contemporary maps of this area to help work out what we're looking at:

The top, coloured map [3] is from 1903, and it shows the lots of land together with their lot numbers. As they had access to the sea they were all Marine Lots.

The lower, black & white map [4] is from 1897 and is much more detailed, showing outlines of individual buildings and their street numbers. I've added the red lines to help me match up the maps and the photo. I've linked the edge of a building in the photo to where I think that edge is shown on the two maps. (You can zoom in on the map if you'd like to see more detail.)

Now back to the photo, starting with the building furthest away from us along the Praya.

Methodist Sailors' and Soldiers' Home [5]

We can just see this building peeping out from behind the larger building on the left.

The land appears to be empty on the 1897 map, but occupied on the 1903 map. That makes sense, as the building opened in 1901. Here's a closer view:

Sailors & Soldiers Home Praya East, by christoph

The Blue Buildings, 1-4 Praya East [6]

Next come four large buildings known as the Blue Buildings, at 1-4 Praya East. (I'm using the street numbers from the 1897 map.)

They continue the nautical theme: the right-hand pair of buildings was rented by the Royal Navy, and used as their canteen:

1900s Royal Naval Canteen, by moddsey

5 & 6 Praya East

The photo isn't clear enough to be 100% sure, but it looks as though the building was being demolished when this photo was taken:

7 & 8 Praya East

There are a few questions about the previous two buildings. According to Smith:

"The Sisters of Charity of St Paul of Chartres owned the lots next to the Blue Buildings (ie Marine Lots numbers 23 and 24). On the seafront of their property they built European-style residences similar to the Blue Buildings and leased them in 1863 to Joao Joaquim dos Remedios, a wealthy Portuguese merchant. He, in turn, subleased them to tenants."

The 1897 map shows four buildings along the seafront of these two lots, numbered 5, 6, 7, and 8, Praya East. The building marked "French Convent" [7] on the map occupies the western two buildings, numbers 5 & 6. I'm not sure if they're the same "European-style residences" from the 1860s that Smith describes, or later buildings erected on those sites.

The 1903 coloured map adds to the confusion. It shows Marine Lot 23 (ML23) much wider than ML 24, and with "French Convent" extending across the front of the lot as though it would occupy buildings 5, 6, & 7.

The photo and the 1897 map look more consistent, with the land split equally between the two lots & buildings. So in this case I think there was a mistake on the 1903 map, where Marine Lots 23 and 24 weren't drawn at the correct size. The map was commercially produced, and below we'll see it has at least one other mistake.

9 & 10 Praya East

These are unusual for being the only single-storey buildings along the Praya.

The 1897 map shows two long buildings running back from the seafront, with a lane between them. I believe the archway in the centre of the facade in the photo was the entrance to that lane. The lane was (and still is) named Li Chit Street, after a member of the family that owned this land.

11 Praya East

This building stood on Marine Lot 29. On the 1903 map the lot is shaded, and is one of the few to have a name attached, "Wanchai Warehouse Co":

12 Praya East

Just in front of 11 & 12 Praya East / Marine Lots 29 & 30, the maps show a short pier. If you'd been here in the early 1870s, you'd have seen a much more impressive pier. Here it is, with a couple of large sailing ships moored alongside:

Victoria Barracks 1870s, by Admin

The pier was 1,000-foot long, built by the Hong Kong Pier and Godown Co [8]. Their godowns (warehouses) occupied the Marine Lots 29 & 30 we've just looked at. The company went bust c.1873, and the pier disappeared soon after - I don't have a firm date for its disappearance yet, but I guess the 1874 typhoon played a part.

13 Praya East

When seen from the sea, this was the only section of the seafront that had a gap in the line of buildings.

Here we're seeing it at an angle instead of face on, but by comparing it with the map we can see it shows:

• a two-storey building, furthest from the camera, numbered "13" on the map
• to the left of it is an open piece of ground, with a crane standing in front of it at the water's edge (we'll talk about the crane more below)
• nearest the camera is another two-storey building, which isn't numbered on the map.

14 Praya East

This is a larger, three-storey building, on the corner of the Praya and Ship Street. 

Back to the crane: buildings 13 &14, and the unnumbered building between them, were all built along the seafront of adjacent Marine Lots numbers 31 & 36. Both lots belonged to a single owner from 1856 on, and housed a succession of shipyard, engineering, and blacksmithing businesses. At the time of this photo, George Fenwick owned the land and ran his business here. Smith describes the site:

"[...] there had been a creek running through the lot from which ships were launched. Then the government closed the creek and the drawbridge at the Praya. This forced the company to stop building larger vessels, though small launches were still built and carted across the Praya to the sea. When the Tramway was built on the Praya in 1904 this last measure had to stop also and the company began to transfer their business to a new site in Causeway Bay. In 1911 the company went into liquidation."

So in 1902 they were still building launches here. The crane was likely used to lift the launches in and out of the sea, and to unload materials used in the shipyard and engineering works.

15-22 Praya East

The scene changes again, and the last buildings we'll look at are two short terraces, each made up of four, two-storey houses:

They were built along the seafront of Marine Lot 64 (the coloured map mistakenly labels it number 84). Originally this lot was like the other lots we've seen, belonging to a single company and housing a handful of large buildings. But by 1860 the lot had been re-developed for residential use. Terraces of small houses were built, shown clearly in the photo and the 1897 map.

These houses were a template for how the rest of this area would soon be changing.

Look at the 1903 map again and note the roads, marked in brown. See how few roads there were between Queen's Road East (just off the top of the map) and the Praya? Between Arsenal Street on the right and Ship Street on the left there is only a single, unnamed road (today's Anton Street).

But left of Ship Street are two more roads in quick succession, Tai Wong Street down the middle of the lot, and Tai Wong Lane along its other side. When a lot changed from industrial to residential use, the residents needed easy access to their new houses, so new roads were built.

Soon after this photo was taken, several more of the lots were re-developed and turned into housing, so more of those access roads were needed. The four additional roads across this land that we see on modern maps are Landale Street, Li Chit Street, Gresson Street, and Lun Fat Street. They were all in place by 1920.

I wonder how much of the change to residential use can be traced to the arrival of the trams in 1904? On the one hand the tramlines meant the lots along the Praya no longer had easy access to the sea. That made them unattractive for use as Godowns or by businesses like Fenwick's. Then at the same time the trams improved communications and reduced commute times, making Wanchai more attractive as a residential area. It makes me think of Kennedy Town today, and how the arrival of the MTR has changed it so quickly.

Who

Sailors Home / Naval Canteen / Shipyard / Ship Street. It's not hard to see that the area was popular with sailors!

As well as the working sailors, the photo shows the area was also popular with people who sailed for leisure. We can see several of their boats moored in the foreground, looking very different from the junks and sampans around them.

Just beyond them is a larger pleasure boat, pulled up out of the water on a slipway:

I believe the slipway belonged to Ah King, a well-known boat builder in Hong Kong. Ah King and western-style sailing boats were closely interlinked. First, Ah King's shipyard was known as one that understood the design and construction of western-style sailing boats, so they may have built some of the boats shown here.

The people who sailed these boats got together and formed the Hong Kong Corinthian Yacht Club (HKCYC) [9]. As Stephen Davies has previously noted, that club was also connected to Ah King:

In Gillian Chambers' history of the RHKYC, Eastern waters Eastern Winds, she mentions that the [HKCYC] at one stage early in the game had their clubhouse in a loft over Ah King's boatyard. The reason for this seems to have been that following the shift towards smaller boats that emerged from changes to rules by the Yacht Racing Association in the mid-1890s, Ah King proved a whizz at building the new craft and hospitable to the chaps who sailed them, who weren't part of the affluenza who could afford the whoppers favoured at the HK Yacht Club. Something like that.

Finally, when the HKCYC opened their own club house in 1906, it was "situated on a very convenient spot on Praya East, between A King's slipway and No. 2 Police Station.", ie just off to the left of the foreground of this photo, and a close neighbour of Ah King.

I hope you've enjoyed this look at turn-of-the-century Wanchai. If you can add any other old photos of this area, they'll be very welcome.

Gwulo photo ID: NDA02

References:

1. Robert Crisp HURLEY [c.1848-1927]
2. "Wanchai: In Search of an Identity" by Carl T. Smith appeared as a chapter in the book "Hong Kong: A Reader in Social History", published by Oxford University Press.
3. 1903 Map of HK Island north shore, original held at UK National Archive, their reference: MFQ 1/1363/9
4. 1897 Map of HK Island north shore, original held at UK National Archive, their reference: MPHH 1/412
5. Methodist Soldiers' and Sailors' Home (1st location) [1901-????]
6. Blue Buildings - Praya East [????-1926]
7. French Convent, Wanchai [????-????]
8. 1,000-foot Pier at Wanchai [1872-????]
9. Hong Kong Corinthian Yacht Club [1906-1920]

When we first looked at the Birthday Buildings for 2013, I was pleasantly surprised to find buildings still standing in Hong Kong that were 50-, 75-, 100-, 125-, and even 150-years old. Let's see how 2017 compares...

50-year-old buildings:

The biggest on the list is the Wah Fu Estate, a public housing estate on the south of Hong Kong island. Here are some photos of it under construction:

1967 was the year that the first residents could move in to the estate, but as the photos show, construction continued after that. The final block wasn't completed until 1978.

At that time the government was building and managing three very different types of housing: The first tier were the resettlement estates, offering simple accommodation to Hong Kong's neediest residents. They were typically people who'd previously lived in one of Hong Kong's squatter areas. Next came the low-cost housing estates, intended for those who had a family income of under HK$500 a month. Finally there were the Hong Kong Housing Authority estates like Wah Fu, aimed at those with family incomes in the range HK$400-900 a month.

I don't have the figures for 1967, but the 1968 Annual Report records 1 million people lived in resettlement estates, just over a quarter of Hong Kong's population at the time. Add in the low-cost housing and Housing Authority estates, and a total of 1.45 million people, or about 38% of Hong Kong's population, were living in government housing.

Back in the 1960s and 70s, the buildings and facilities at Wah Fu were top-of-the-range as far as government housing went. But fifty years on, tenants' expectations have risen and the buildings are showing their age. In 2014 it was announced that the Wah Fu estate would be cleared and re-developed. Allowing ten years to re-locate the current residents, the re-development is scheduled to start in 2024.

75-year-old buildings:

100-year-old buildings

Gwulo doesn't a record have any buildings that were finished in either 1942 or 1917, and are still standing today. If you know of any we're missing, please let us know in the comments below.

125-year-old buildings

The postbox on the Peak is a borderline case, as though there has been a postbox there since 1892, it has been replaced at least once over the years. Here's a c.1900 photo of the first postbox at that site (it's down in the bottom-left corner):

And here's the current version:

There was a time in 2015 when it seemed the postbox was going to be covered up because of its "inappropriate" royal ciphers. Thankfully that plan appears to have quietly been dropped. In the meantime a small sign has appeared next to the postbox:

It reads:

Colonial post boxes are among the "historical street relics" of Hong Kong. They not only witnessed the developments of the colonial period but are also a part of the collective memory of Hong Kong residents. [...] There is a need for a conservation policy to be established before these relics disappear.

Very true!

The Gap Rock Lighthouse is another borderline case.

1920s Gap Rock Lighthouse, by eternal1966c1

Gap Rock in 2015, by SW Poon

Although it was built by Hong Kong, and manned by lighthouse keepers from Hong Kong until 1941, it lies outside of Hong Kong's waters.

There's nothing borderline about the last one: the Dairy Farm Building is definitely within Hong Kong, standing at the top of Wyndham Street. Though it does show a "1913" date, which can be a bit confusing.

That's the year the building was extended (well, one of the years, as it was extended several times), but the original core was built in 1892.

Dairy Farm Building - Fringe Club, by HK Man (香港在消失ing)

150-year-old buildings

Nothing for 1867 either. So 2017 isn't such a good year for the birthday buildings  - all the more reason to hold on to our remaining old postboxes!

Find out more

If you'd like to see what information and photos we have for any of the buildings shown above, just click on the blue building name in the list. You can also click on any photo to see a larger version you can zoom in to.

And of course if you can add any memories, facts or photos, they'll be very welcome. Please click to leave a comment, or upload a photo.

Finally, you can also see the birthday buildings from 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Regards, David

This week's newsletter is early, as I'll be away from Hong Kong from tomorrow for a long weekend break.

The photo above comes from a set that was printed in the 1950s, for sale to tourists. I guess they were aiming at the budget end of the market, as though the photos are sharp, they aren't always developed well. Most of them need work in Photoshop to even out the dark & light areas.

We're looking north up Nathan Road, across the junction with Austin Road. The star of the scene is the tall building in the centre. According to the caption on the photo it is the "Shinrock Hotel Kowloon". That's another sign of the photos' budget nature, as of course it's actually the Shamrock Hotel.

The Shamrock opened in January 1952, and was one of the first skyscrapers in Kowloon. It is still with us today, and still a hotel, though it no longer towers over its neighbours. Judging from the other photos in the set this was taken in 1953, which explains why the Shamrock is looking so smart.

This is another photo that I'll be using in tonight's talk at 7pm in the CVA on Kennedy Road, as part of a sequence of ten old photos taken in Kowloon. Several show Kowloon in the 1950s, and we'll talk about how it was a time of great change for Kowloon as it coped with the population boom / housing crisis. As examples of the changes we'll use this photo looking south down Nathan Road:

Then we'll turn 180 degrees to look north:

And head up on to the rooftop of the Shamrock Hotel to look out over Kowloon:

I'm looking forward to this evening. The CVA is a good venue for showing photos, as it has a big screen and theatre-style seating so everyone gets a clear view.

If you're coming along, please come up and say hello, as it's always a pleasure to meet subscribers in person.

Regards,

David

Gwulo photo ID: A294J

This week's photo comes from the same set as last week's "Shinrock Hotel" photo. The printer's bad spell must have passed, as this photo is correctly titled:

WHOLE VIEW OF CHEUNG CHOW

The photographer was standing on the slopes at the northern end of the island, looking south across the built-up centre towards the hills at the southern end.

Like last week's photo, this one needed a bit of tweaking to sort out the poor printing, but the underlying photo is good and sharp.

Down in the bottom-right corner there is an assortment of trays laid out in the sun, and lines of what look like barrels and umbrellas.

My first guess in an island photo like this is that we're looking at the production of shrimp paste, like we still see at Tai O today. However we've previously seen this area in a photo from the 1930s, and that had another explanation. Here's the photo. This time the photographer was on the southern hills looking north, so it's a view in the opposite direction to the 1950s view:

Here's a close-up of the hillside above the trays & barrels area:

Ford Wong wrote in to explain what we're looking at:

The terraces are part of a preserved fruit factory, Wong Wing Kee Preserved Fruit Factory, which dated back to 1908. In those days, the workers use the sun light to dry the fruit and made over 30 varieties of products.

The factory moved to China in the 1970's when the labour source dried out.

So I guess the 1950s photo shows fruit too, but corrections welcome.

The trays & barrels overlook an open area, with the sea on the right and a road leading into the distance between the houses.

There is still an open area there today. It's where the ceremonies connected with Cheung Chau's famous bun festival are performed.

2004 - Cheung Chau Bun Festival, by Cliff Atkins

The road that leads off from the open area is Pak She Street, and it's still there today too. The sandy beach is long gone though, buried under reclamation. If you want to know where it was, just take a walk along today's San Pak She Street as it follows the line of the old beach.

I visited this area with a couple of Gwulo friends in 2015 (see the article "A stroll through Cheung Chau's history" for details.) At the time I took this photo of the Pak Tai Temple that stands at the back of the open ground:

It was built in the 1780s, so it must be there in the 1950s photo. Why can't we see it?

In fact we can - most of the temple is hidden behind the trees, but the temple's ornate gables are peeping through a gap in the branches. I've highlighted them at the bottom of this copy of the photo, so you can see where they are:

I've also highlighted three other buildings we saw in 2015. Above and slightly right from the temple there's a building with a long pitched roof. It's the Cheung Chau Theatre, and in the 1950s it was a working cinema. The building was still standing in 2015, but only just. A look inside showed that a large section of the roof had collapsed:

Fortunately the other two highlighted buildings are in much better condition. The building above the cinema in the photo, and on slightly higher ground, is Cheung Chau's police station:

Then the building on the left overlooking the beach is the St John Hospital:

Both the police station and hospital are still in active use today.

Looking into the distance, the southern hills look very empty compared with the built-up area in the centre of the island. We've looked at the reason behind this before, when we talked about Cheung Chau's European Reservation. The ""Cheung Chau (Residence) Ordinance" was in effect from 1919 til 1946, and during that time the majority of houses that were built were just a single-storey high, and often home to missionaries and their families. Here I've highlighted the single-storey buildings we can see in that area (for a closer look at any photo, click the photo then on the new page click "Zoom"):

How has Cheung Chau changed?

Here's a photo of Cheung Chau from 2003:

2003 - Cheung Chau, by Cliff Atkins

Cliff was standing further east than the 1950s photographer, but he's still caught the middle section of the island and the southern hills beyond.

Fifty years on there had been big changes on the southern hills, as they are now covered by buildings. But though we've noted how reclamation has buried the western beach, the eastern beach from the 1950s photo is still with us today.

Gwulo photo ID: A294F

May and June have seen the worst of Hong Kong's landslides over the years. In this week's guest post, T.C. Lee, K.Y. Ma and C.M. Shun describe the worst of them all:

With a hilly terrain, Hong Kong is prone to the hazards of landslides during rainstorms, in particular for steep slopes in developed areas. Over the years, there were severe rainstorm events in Hong Kong that triggered disastrous landslides and resulted in heavy loss of lives. Apart from the notorious landslide events in 1966 [1] and 1972 [2], another catastrophic incident in the early part of Hong Kong history occurred in 1925 at Po Hing Fong, a quiet and luxurious residential area in the mid-levels near Caine Road on Hong Kong Island.

At round 9 a.m. on 17 July 1925, the retaining wall of In Mi Lane [3] which was beneath Caine Road collapsed after days of heavy rain. Large amount of debris ran down to Po Hing Fong and swept away seven four-storey houses from No. 12 to No. 16 (see Figures 1 and 2) with some thirty families inside, causing 75 deaths in this tragic event [4].

Figure 1: A rough sketch of the street map around Po Hing Fong in the 1920s.

Figure 2: Workers clearing away the debris of the collapsed retaining wall
and houses at Po Hing Fong in July 1925 (photo courtesy of Mr C M Shun).

The victims of this incident were all rich merchants and influential dignitaries, including Mr Chau Siu Ki, J.P., owner of No.12, former Chairman of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals and a former member of the Legislative Council, and most of his family members in total 11 persons. His son, Sir Chau Tsun-nin, CBE, survived in this disaster. He was later appointed as a member of Executive Council and Legislative Council, and was knighted in 1956. For No.13-14, the owner was a descendant of Mr Chiu Yu-tin, one of the founders of Nam Pak Hong and the third Chairman of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals. No.15 was owned by Mr Wong Pak San who was a tycoon and a former Principal Director of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals. At the time, this was the deadliest rainstorm in the early days of Hong Kong which hit the headlines of many local newspapers [5] and aroused major concern in the community. The event is also keeping the record of the highest mortality in a single landslide event in Hong Kong (see Table 1).

Table 1: Top five deadliest rainstorm events in Hong Kong (1884-2016):

* Based on daily rainfall recorded at the Hong Kong Observatory Headquarters

^ The 150 deaths were attributed to the landslides in Sau Mau Ping of Kwun Tong (71 persons), Po Shan Road of mid-levels west (67 persons) and other locations [7, 8]

As shown in Figure 3, the weather in Hong Kong was unsettled with occasional heavy showers from 14 to 16 July 1925 with a total of about 140 mm of rainfall recorded at the Observatory during the period.

Figure 3: Hourly rainfall recorded at the Hong Kong Observatory
from 14 to 17 July 1925

The weather deteriorated further with torrential rain in the early morning on 17 July and by 9 a.m., more than 240 mm of rainfall had fallen at the Observatory since midnight. Overall, the total rainfall during the period of 14 - 17 July at the Observatory was around 404 mm. While there was no rainfall station near the site at Po Hing Fong, the total rainfall recorded at the Botanic Garden from 14 to 17 July 1925 was about 436 mm (17.17 inches) according to reports by the Botanical and Forestry Department at the time [9], suggesting that the rainfall amount over Hong Kong Island during the period was likely to be comparable or slightly higher than that recorded at the Observatory in Tsim Sha Tsui. 

Looking back at the weather charts, a tropical cyclone made landfall to the east of Hong Kong near Shantou on the night of 14 July and tracked northwards, weakening over eastern China in the next couple of days (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Track of the tropical cyclone from 9 to 16 July 1925
that affected the landslide at Po Hing Fong.

The southwest monsoon affecting the coastal area of Guangdong strengthened in the wake of the landfalling tropical cyclone and brought unsettled weather to Hong Kong on 14-17 July (Figures 5 to 7).

Figure 5: Weather chart at 1400 H on 14 July 1925.

Figure 6: Weather chart at 0600 H on 17 July 1925.

Figure 7: Hourly mean wind speed and direction recorded at the
Hong Kong Observatory on 14-17 July 1925. The wind speeds were
calculated from data recorded by the Beckley anemometer at HKO
Headquartres in 1900 and the conversion factors from HKO Technical
Note No. 66 [12].

The Hong Kong Observatory hoisted the local storm signal No. 5 (meaning at the time Gale winds expected to affect Hong Kong from the west) between 4:10 a.m. on 14 July and 10:00 a.m. on 15 July. Coincidently, this was very similar to the main cause behind the historical rainstorm event that occurred just over a year later in 1926 after another tropical cyclone made landfall near Shantou [10]. However, it sounds a bit strange that, according to the track of the tropical cyclones at the time, both storms continued to tracking north after making landfall to the east of Hong Kong, but they still caused heavy rain in Hong Kong. This may not be in line with our general understanding that the heavy rain in Hong Kong induced by the strengthening of the southwest monsoon usually occurs when a tropical cyclone moves west to the north of Hong Kong (at 115 deg. E or its west) after making landfall to the northeast of Hong Kong [11]. Did these two tropical cyclones which brought disastrous rainstorms to Hong Kong come closer to the north of Hong Kong than what were depicted in the historical records of the Observatory? It may be a subject of further research.

During the inquest in the Coroner's court, Mr Charles William Jeffries, the then Acting Director of the Hong Kong Observatory, analyzed the rainfall records in June and July, and indicated that while the rainfall of this event was not unprecedented, it was also not common. A similar quantity had only been recorded on three occasions previously in 1885, 1891 and 1892. There would not be much difference between the rainfall at Po Hing Fong and the Hong Kong Observatory on that day [13]. Summarizing the evidence and statements from the expert witnesses and the engineers of the Public Works Department, the collapse of the retaining wall was mainly attributed to inadequate safety margin of the retaining wall, deficiency in drainage system and judgment error in the retaining wall inspection in 1923. The court also offered the following recommendations for improvement [14]:

1. Examine retaining walls in the vicinity thoroughly and take immediate steps to strengthen and / or rebuild;
2. Appoint a commission of experts to investigate and improve the responsibility and supervision by the Public Works Department of all roads and buildings and nearby hillsides or retaining walls as well as relevant drainage systems; and
3. Members of the commission must be independent experts and be empowered to propose amendments in Building Ordinances.

Later on the Legislative Council passed in its meeting on 24 September 1925 a funding of HKD 241,750 for the repair of the rainstorm damages [15]. In the Legislative Council meeting on 22 October 1925, the Government committed to conduct systematic inspection of retaining walls in different districts. As the Government was not obligated to use public funds to maintain private retaining walls, they will inform the owners of the retaining walls with problems to carry out the repair work [16]. Canadian geologist, Dr William Lawrence Uglow, arrived at Hong Kong to conduct a comprehensive geological survey on 6 November 1925 and submitted a study report on 21 April 1926. He pointed out that the weathered granite can be very vulnerable and the retaining wall of Po Hing Fong was a typical example of this [17]. While the report mainly focused on the feasibility of developing underground water resources, it could be considered as a response by the Government to the recommendation of establishing the committee of experts.

Although the rainstorm in 1926 set a historical rainfall record, it was relatively less deadly than that of 1925 [10]. As such, the proposed amendment of the Building Ordinances was not submitted to the Legislative Council until 1935. The amendment was then passed with a number of new measures including regulations on the construction of foundations, restricting the maximum height of a retaining wall to 25 metres, at least one weep hole of not less than 75 millimetres in diameter for every three square metres, installing a hydrophobic layer at the back of each retaining wall, accompanying the design with a stress diagram, and increasing the fine to 500 dollars for any offence against the Building Ordinances [18].

Concluding remarks

The Po Hing Fong disaster in 1925 is still a record keeper of the highest death toll in a single landslide event in Hong Kong. Although the rainstorm did not set a new rainfall record, the disastrous landslide occurred due to inadequate safety margin of the retaining wall, deficiency in drainage system and judgment error of the retaining wall inspection. Given the concerned retaining wall was designed over a century ago (referring to the completion time) and the relatively primitive geotechnical engineering knowledge at the time when compared with the present day, the below par safety margin of the retaining wall was only a post-event assessment and not totally the fault of the then engineers. Accidents and disasters are usually the result of a combination of factors rather than a single one. Coincidentally, the accumulated rainfall of the rainstorm on 18 June 1972 was also not extreme enough to break any historical record[19], but the induced landslides resulted in the highest mortality in the history of Hong Kong. Since the Government established the Geotechnical Engineering Office (GEO) in 1977, the upgrading and maintenance work of man-made slopes had improved significantly with a noticeable decrease in the number of landslide fatalities (Figure 8). This truly demonstrates that the Government has been working in the right direction for slope safety and landslide prevention.

Figure 8: Landslide fatalities in Hong Kong (Data source : GEO)

Against the background of climate change, extreme weather events including heavy rain are expected to become more frequent, posing a great challenge to the safety of natural slopes[20]. With a view to preparing Hong Kong for the climate change challenges, we have to learn from the historical lessons to improve prevention measures and make a concerted effort to better the slope safety and maintenance work. Moreover, we should promote public awareness and enhance the resilience of the community against the risk of natural terrain landslides in Hong Kong. 

The Authors:

• T.C. Lee: Senior Scientific Officer, Hong Kong Observatory.
• K.Y. Ma: Mr K.Y. Ma is a retired government engineer and also an enthusiast in the history of engineering in Hong Kong. He is currently Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Real Estate and Construction, University of Hong Kong.
• C.M. Shun: Director of the Hong Kong Observatory.

References:

1. T. Y. Chen, 1969 : The severe rainstorms in Hong Kong during June 1966, Supplement to Meteorological Results 1966, Royal Observatory, Hong Kong
2. T. T. Cheng and Martin C. Yerg, Jr, 1979 : The severe rainfall occasion, 16-18 1972, Royal Observatory Technical Note No. 51.
3. In Mi Lane is no longer exist nowadays
4. Item 39, Report of the Director of Public Works for the year 1925 
5. South China Morning Post and 華僑日報 on 18 July 1925; the China Mail, and Hong Kong Daily Press on 20 July 1925
6. Ho Pui-yin, 2003: "Weathering the Storm: Hong Kong Observatory and Social Development", Hong Kong University Press, 364 pp 
7. Unforgettable Incidents @ Kwun Tong
8. Yang, T. L., S. Mackey and E. Cumine, Final Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Rainstorm Disasters 1972, GEO Report No. 229
9. Report on the Botanical and Forestry Department for the Year 1925, Appendix N to Hong Kong Administrative Report for 1925. 
10. The Phenomenal Rainstorm in 1926
11. Lam, H.K., 1975: The August rainstorms of 1969 and 1972 in Hong Kong. Hong Kong Observatory Technical Note No. 40 
12. W.C. Poon, HKO Technical Note No. 66, 1982: Tropical cyclone causing persistent gales at the Royal Observatory 1884-1957 and at Waglan Island 1953-1980 
13. Hong Kong Daily Press, the China Mail and Hong Kong Telegraph on 25 July 1925
14. Hong Kong Telegraph on 5 September 1925
15. Report of Hong Kong Legislative Council Meeting on 24 September 1925
16. Report of Hong Kong Legislative Council Meeting on 22 October 1925
17. WL Uglow, Geology and Mineral Resources of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1926
18. Hong Kong Government Gazette, No. 300, 12 April 1935 
19. There were three consecutive days with daily rainfall exceeding 200 millimetres on 16-18 July 1972, unprecedented in the record of the Hong Kong Observatory
20. GEO, 2016 : Natural Terrain Landslide Hazards in Hong Kong

This post originally appeared on the Observatory's Blog. Thank you to the authors for allowing me to share their work here on Gwulo.

Further notes on the number of buildings destroyed at Po Hing Fong

On the 18th of July 1925, the newspapers reported seven houses were destroyed in the landslide. However the Annual Report for the Public Works Department, written at the end of the year, stated that five houses were destroyed. The numbering of the destroyed houses, 12-16, also suggests five houses.

I asked the authors about this, and K.Y. Ma replied:

The report in the Wa Kiu Yat Po explained twice that there were five lots but seven houses collapsed.

Clipping from Wa Kiu Yat Pofor 18 July 1925

Then this map shows the layout of the lots:

Map of area around Po Hing Fong

Detail of map showing the buildings that were affected.
Street numbers are shown at the top, and lot numbers in centre of each lot

Inland Lots No. 1614, 1643, 1644 and 1645 (Houses No. 12 to No. 15) are double standard lots, while I.L. No 1646 & 1647 (Houses No. 16 & 17) are standard lots. Wealthy Chinese merchants often bought twin lots as they had large families with many concubines and children. It was quite common that they built the house in the twin lot as one entity. That is why No 12 and No 13 were regarded as one house while No. 14 and 15 were regarded as four houses by Wa Kiu Yat Po reporters.  Wa Kiu Yat Po reporters said that they regarded partial collapse of No 16 as a collapsed house and thus making the total to be seven.

There is no universal definition of a house, but there is a definition on lot number. That is why PWD only counted the lot. But the media counted in their own way. There is no discrepancy on the definition of collapse between PWD and the media both regarded partial collapse as “collapsed”.

From the Coroner Court proceedings, No. 16 and No. 17 were propped due to their dangerous condition until all rescue work had been completed. PWD then took over the site for removal of these dangerous houses. (SCMP 21, 24, 27, 28, 29,July, China Mail, Daily Press and Hong Kong Telegraph reported the same but on different days).

From the above facts, I interpret that six lots were affected, five lots were collapsed; eight houses affected, and seven houses collapsed.

Related pages on Gwulo:

• Henry Tom BROOKS [1880-1940] was awarded the awarded the Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem Medal for rescuing victims at the Po Hing Fong landslide in 1925 
• Photos of a huge rock that killed several people in a landslide caused by the 1926 rainstorm.
• Photos of the 1966 Chater Hall landslide, another landslide from 1966 near the junction of Peak Rd. and Barker Rd, and yet another at HKU.
• Photos & memories of the 1972 Po Shan Road landslide / Kotewall Road disaster
• A photo and report of the 1973 landslide in front of Thorpe Manor.

If you can add any photos / memories of Hong Kong's landslides, they'll be gratefully received.

This week's photo looks out from the Peak, over the city and harbour towards Stonecutters Island. We can tell which part of the city this is from a couple of roads that run vertically up the photo. The one on the left is Centre Street and the one on the right is Eastern Street, so we're looking out over Sai Ying Pun.

Usually the tourists at the Peak focus their cameras on Central, so I'm always glad to find a photo of some other part of town. Fortunately I also have another photo with a similar view, but taken around 1900:

If we compare the two photos, the most obvious change is in the shipping. The large sailboats in the 1900 photo have all gone by the 1950s, as have the many smaller sailing junks that were near the shore.

There are some big changes among the buildings too, but to see those we'll need to get closer:

These show the area around the northern end of Eastern Street (1900 view at the top and the 1950s view below). Connaught Road West runs along the seafront at the top, then the crossroads a little way inland marks the junction with Des Voeux Road West. The strip of land between those two roads was still very new in the 1900 photo, as it had only been reclaimed a few years earlier. It's interesting to see the different styles of building on either side of Eastern Street: three storeys to the right, but much smaller two-storey buildings on the left. I associate two-storey buildings with much earlier in the nineteenth century, so I wonder why they'd have built them on this new land, instead of building the larger three-storey buildings? Were they quicker to build and so quicker to start recovering the costs? And how long did they last? By the 1950s photo we can see that the two-storey buildings have all been replaced by newer four-storey buildings.

Moving a little further inland and uphill along Eastern Street, we come to a cluster of hospital buildings:

Here's how they are labeled on a 1901 map of the area [1]:

• 1a - Venereal and Fever Wards
• 1b - Not labeled
• 1c - Civil Hospital
• 1d - Isolation Hospital
• 1e - Not labeled
• 1f - Superintendents House
• 1g - Medical Staff Quarters

In the 1930s, the new Queen Mary Hospital had opened out at Pokfulam, so this area was no longer the center of government healthcare in Hong Kong. Despite its downgrade, in the 1950s the area continued to have a medical focus:

• 2a - The building marked 1a is still standing, though unfortunately I don't have a detailed map to know its function.
• 2c - This new building is the second generation of the Tsan Yuk Maternity Hospital, which relocated here from the original site over on Western Street. It is built on the site of the old buildings 1b & 1c, and was completed in 1955. (That's the date I'm using for this photo, but if you can identify any buildings that date the photo to later than 1955, please let me know in the comments below.)
• 2e - The buildings at 1d and 1f have both been demolished to leave a large open area. Today the open area is the King George V park.
• 2g - Something I hadn't noticed before is that the building in 1g was extended to the right / east at some point, roughly doubling its size. Its function had changed too, and in the 1950s it was used as a mental hospital for female patients.

Moving uphill again, we come to several of Sai Ying Pun's famous schools:

Building 1a housed the "Diocesan School" according to the 1901 map. Today we know it as the Diocesan Boys School, or DBS. They moved over to Kowloon in the 1920s, and at some time between then and the 1950s the site was re-developed and a much larger school, 2a, was built. It is still there today, and is known as the Bonham Road Primary Government School.

Uphill again, and at 1b there is a strip of open ground between Park Road and Lyttelton Road. That open area was part of the West End Park. The main building of the new St. Stephen's Girl's College was built on that site and opened in 1924. It is shown at 2b in the 1950s photo, and it's also still there today.

Another building that's worth a closer look is over in the bottom-right corner of the 1900 photo:

I've highlighted the three roads to help identify them:

• red - High Street
• green - Bonham Road
• blue - Park Road

By the 1950s the open spaces have been covered with buildings, including one that is an odd jumble of towers and turrets:

Here's a clearer view of it, as seen from Bonham Road:

Euston, by aetse

It looks like something you'd find in Disneyland, but it was actually a private residence called Euston, one of several 'castles' that Eu Tong Sen had built in Hong Kong.

That's the edge of the 1900 photo, but the 1950s photo shows buildings even further up the hill, including this cluster around the junction of Conduit Road and Po Shan Road:

The building at the bottom left has an unusual outline, with it's top-left corner a series of steps. That helps identify it, as the modern map shows the building is still standing, number 43A Conduit Road. The middle building, Haddon Court, is a more recent addition, but number 41B also appears in both the 1950s photo and today's map.

Today, the next building to the east / right is Realty Gardens. It was built on the site of The Fairview at 41A Conduit Road, and we just catch the edge of The Fairview site in the photo:

The terraces and pavilion were part of its gardens.

The Fairview had a couple of claims to fame in the 1950s. For most of that decade it was home to the Foreign Correspondents' Club (FCC), and site of some memorable parties. It became well-known outside of Hong Kong too, not for the FCC, but when it was used as a location in the hit movie, Love is a Many Splendored Thing. It was used as a hospital in the film, and the pavilion made a few appearances - you can see it in these stills from the film at centre-right and bottom-right:

If you can spot any other points of interest in these photos, or add any memories & information about them, please let us know in the comments below.

Gwulo photo ID: A411

References:

1. Plan of Victoria, Hong Kong. [In 29 sheets.] Public Works Department, Hong Kong, 1901. 60 feet to 1 inch. Held at the UK National Archives, their reference: CO 700/HongKongandChina20

When we first looked at the Birthday Buildings for 2013, I was pleasantly surprised to find buildings still standing in Hong Kong that were 50-, 75-, 100-, 125-, and even 150-years old. Let's see how 2017 compares...

50-year-old buildings:

The biggest on the list is the Wah Fu Estate, a public housing estate on the south of Hong Kong island. Here are some photos of it under construction:

1967 was the year that the first residents could move in to the estate, but as the photos show, construction continued after that. The final block wasn't completed until 1978.

At that time the government was building and managing three very different types of housing: The first tier were the resettlement estates, offering simple accommodation to Hong Kong's neediest residents. They were typically people who'd previously lived in one of Hong Kong's squatter areas. Next came the low-cost housing estates, intended for those who had a family income of under HK$500 a month. Finally there were the Hong Kong Housing Authority estates like Wah Fu, aimed at those with family incomes in the range HK$400-900 a month.

I don't have the figures for 1967, but the 1968 Annual Report records 1 million people lived in resettlement estates, just over a quarter of Hong Kong's population at the time. Add in the low-cost housing and Housing Authority estates, and a total of 1.45 million people, or about 38% of Hong Kong's population, were living in government housing.

Back in the 1960s and 70s, the buildings and facilities at Wah Fu were top-of-the-range as far as government housing went. But fifty years on, tenants' expectations have risen and the buildings are showing their age. In 2014 it was announced that the Wah Fu estate would be cleared and re-developed. Allowing ten years to re-locate the current residents, the re-development is scheduled to start in 2024.

75-year-old buildings:

100-year-old buildings

Gwulo doesn't a record have any buildings that were finished in either 1942 or 1917, and are still standing today. If you know of any we're missing, please let us know in the comments below. [UPDATE 22 May 2017: Thanks to Jenna for the tip that several buildings around the Tai Tam & Tai Tam Tuk reservoirs were finished in 1917.]

125-year-old buildings

The postbox on the Peak is a borderline case, as though there has been a postbox there since 1892, it has been replaced at least once over the years. Here's a c.1900 photo of the first postbox at that site (it's down in the bottom-left corner):

And here's the current version:

There was a time in 2015 when it seemed the postbox was going to be covered up because of its "inappropriate" royal ciphers. Thankfully that plan appears to have quietly been dropped. In the meantime a small sign has appeared next to the postbox:

It reads:

Colonial post boxes are among the "historical street relics" of Hong Kong. They not only witnessed the developments of the colonial period but are also a part of the collective memory of Hong Kong residents. [...] There is a need for a conservation policy to be established before these relics disappear.

Very true!

The Gap Rock Lighthouse is another borderline case.

1920s Gap Rock Lighthouse, by eternal1966c1

Gap Rock in 2015, by SW Poon

Although it was built by Hong Kong, and manned by lighthouse keepers from Hong Kong until 1941, it lies outside of Hong Kong's waters.

There's nothing borderline about the last one: the Dairy Farm Building is definitely within Hong Kong, standing at the top of Wyndham Street. Though it does show a "1913" date, which can be a bit confusing.

That's the year the building was extended (well, one of the years, as it was extended several times), but the original core was built in 1892.

Dairy Farm Building - Fringe Club, by HK Man (香港在消失ing)

150-year-old buildings

Nothing for 1867 either. So 2017 isn't such a good year for the birthday buildings  - all the more reason to hold on to our remaining old postboxes!

Find out more

If you'd like to see what information and photos we have for any of the buildings shown above, just click on the blue building name in the list. You can also click on any photo to see a larger version you can zoom in to.

And of course if you can add any memories, facts or photos, they'll be very welcome. Please click to leave a comment, or upload a photo.

Finally, you can also see the birthday buildings from 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Regards, David

This week’s newsletter is an update from regular contributor Barbara Anslow:

Buckingham Palace Garden Party

Thanks to the Java Far Eastern Prisoners of War Club 1942, and the Not Forgotten Association, I was able to attend a Garden Party at Buckingham Place on 30th May this year with my niece Janet (aka Jane) Hayes who came over from her home in USA to be my carer for the event. Jane's parents, Clifton Large and my sister Mabel met in Stanley Camp and were married after the war ended.

Jane and Barbara, 
setting off for the Palace

It was a great thrill for both of us to enter the gardens through the Palace itself!  We were not allowed to take photos inside, but Jane took loads once we were in the garden, where tables and chairs were set out, many beneath canopies, others on the grass; she even took a photo of the portaloos!

A band played in an area where Prince Harry greeted pre-selected war veterans. Among several thousand of guests crowding around, I was too short to see the Prince properly. Except when  he finally left the grounds up the Palace steps, all I saw was the back of his ginger head. Jane being taller had a better view, and commented how interested and friendly the Prince was as he chatted with the veterans - most well into their nineties, wearing gleaming medals.

We met up with two more Java Club members and had tea with them - cakes with a royal emblem, scones topped with cream and the largest raspberries I have ever seen, then bowls of strawberries and cream.  

It was a wonderful afternoon!

Annual reunion and AGM of the Java Club

Four days later, I attended the annual reunion and AGM of the Java Club at the Falcon Hotel, Stratford-upon-Avon.  The weekend was such a happy and friendly occasion, so moving to meet POW veterans of the Far East, the oldest being Dr Frankland who is 105!

Dr Frankland (left)

Four members of my family came with me including my niece Jane, who was delighted to meet up with Stanley internee Bill Macauley who had been with her father at school prewar in Hong Kong - this was their first meeting, she enjoyed hearing about her Dad's schooldays.

Bill Macauley (front row, left). 
Barbara is in the second row at the right.

We also met up with Jean Addis who was a baby when she was sent to Stanley.

Jean Addis

Jean brought along some lovingly preserved little clothes which my sister Mabel had made for her out of odds and ends in camp.

Mabel’s daughter Jane adds:

“One of the highlights of this wonderful trip was meeting Jean Addis who thoughtfully brought along some clothing that my Mum had made for her while in camp, along with the Red Cross bag that was used to return the clothing to her. I was so touched that she had thought I would be interested to see the items and could barely hold back tears as I was looking at them.”

The Java FEPOW Club provided wheelchairs which could be borrowed free of charge to push slow walkers (including me) about and through the lovely town. A veteran hosted every one of the tables at the Gala Dinner on Saturday night, which the Mayor attended. We were all provided with Union Jacks which we waved enthusiastically when, after the meal, Victoria Wilson sang 1940's songs, including 'We'll Meet Again', also 'Jerusalem' and 'Land of Hope and Glory' in which we all joined, there were a few tears.

Next morning many guests attended a moving Service of Remembrance in the town, paying tribute to all servicemen and internees who had died in the Far Eastern War.
 
 

The Java FEPOW Club

Some Gwulo readers might be interested in joining the Java FEPOW Club which is open to British ex members of HM Forces and civilians who were imprisoned or interned in the Far East between 1942-45 by the Japanese.  Mrs Lesley Clark is the Chairman and she will give you more information about membership charges, etc. Her contact address is:

lesleyclark@yahoo.co.uk

Other relatives and people who might like to learn more about the FEPOW's history may become associate members, paying an annual subscription (at present £20). Full and associate members receive four issues a year of the Java Journal which include the war experiences of ex POWs and internees.

The objectives of the Club are to re-unite full members with old comrades; to help FEPOW families to find out more of their parents' or grandparents' wartime experiences, and to alleviate distress wherever possible with the Club's Welfare Department.

The Club's website is

http://www.thejavafepowclub42.org/

Kind regards,
Barbara

Many thanks to Barbara for this latest update. Here are some related articles on Gwulo about the people and places mentioned above:

• Childhood memories of 1920s Hong Kong
• Barbara’s wartime diary
• "I got married in King George VI's bedroom"
• 2014 interview with Barbara: Part 1& Part 2
• August 1945 / August 2015: Is it really true?

I liked this photo as soon as I saw it, so I bought it without any story in mind. Let's see what we can find out about it.

When: No help from the back in this case:

It was printed by a commercial photographer, but there isn't any stamp box to show us which manufacturer's paper they used. There is a clue from the shape of the photo though. We've seen this format, short & wide, in other photos that came from the 1920s [1]. Not a lot to go on but I'll guess the 1920s as its date.

Who: The photo was sold with the text "Shoemaker" written on the front. Here he is:

What: If you look between his feet, you'll see one of the main tools of his trade, the shoemaker's "last", a roughly foot-shaped piece of metal that he uses when making and repairing shoes:

A shoemaker is also known as a cobbler, which leads us to the old saying:

"Let the cobbler stick to his last"

It's used to tell someone not to give advice about things they don't understand, and is based on an even older, Latin saying:

"Sutor, ne ultra crepidam" [2]

Shoemakers pop up in other sayings too, such as:

"Him that makes shoes go barefoot himself" [3]

If you look at the photo of the last again, you'll see that it certainly applies here.

The idea behind the saying is that people often fail to receive the benefits of their own expertise. It applies to their family too, giving us the more common saying:

"The shoemaker's children always go barefoot"

This isn't quite so old as the Latin one above, but it was already in use by 1546 [3], so it's old enough!

There's a child in this photo:

They're out of focus though, so it is difficult to see if they're wearing shoes or not. In any case, I doubt they're related to the shoemaker. The child looks as though he lives locally, with his stool and table. But the shoemaker is just visiting, as we can see from his equipment:

He uses the shoulder pole to carry everything he needs, setting up shop wherever there is business. He'll carry his tool cabinet on one end of the pole:

And balance it with a basket full of leather on the other:

I wonder when this type of traveling craftsman disappeared from Hong Kong's streets? I asked my wife, who remembers growing up in Sham Shui Po in the 1960s and 70s. She says at that time people like this already had permanent stalls to work from. There were still lots of hawkers on the streets, but mainly selling snacks and other foodstuffs.

Do any of our older readers remember seeing wandering shoemakers like these?

Gwulo photo ID: EC014

References:

1. Photos from collection A309
2. "Sutor, ne ultra crepidam"
3. "The shoemaker's children always go barefoot"

(The text of this article was written by Harry Rolnick. It originally appeared in the April 1980 edition of the Peninsula Group magazine, and is reproduced here with their permission. The illustrations are from Gwulo's contributors.)

One fateful day in the autumn of 1912, Hong Kong’s end began. A group of the most prominent citizens of the Colony – incensed at the fact that their horses shied away from horseless carriages, irate that the public weal was endangered, that human life was fated to die out and totally confused by the newest juggernauts of the road – signed what was called a “monster petition” and presented it to the Governor.

Motorcars (said the petition) were a danger to Hong Kong. They were to be eliminated immediately. The dozen-odd cars which had found their way into the Colony were henceforth to be exported out of the Colony.

The Governor took the petition, read it carefully, agreed that something should be done…but did not believe that motor cars should be eliminated completely…

Thus Hong Kong’s fate was sealed.

The dozen-odd little chug-chug’s multiplied tenfold by 1915. And when those people with country houses on the southern side of Hong Kong island no longer felt that transportation by sedan-chair was the ultra plus non for travel, automobiles, those new-fangled noisy contraptions, were the and only the means of getting around.

Except for one slight problem: no road. So the evolution continued inexorably. First sedan chairs, then cars, then roads envisaged for the wooden sylvan glades of southern Hong Kong – and then, just as inevitably, came The Repulse Bay Hotel.

1920s Repulse Bay Hotel, by Fergus Macdermot

This year (1980) marks the 60th anniversary of The Repulse Bay Hotel’s official opening – a positively hoary age, in Hong Kong’s terms, for the grand old place. Yet, to rephrase the old age, had there been no Repulse Bay Hotel, it would have been necessary to build one. After all, where else could ladies and gentlemen of quality in colonial Hong Kong have spent their own Roaring 20’s?

The Hong Kong Hotel Company (later The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, Ltd. – parent company of The Peninsula Group) did own the old Hongkong Hotel on Pedder Street, and there were a few other hotels around the Colony. But obviously, when the first road was to be built from Central to Repulse Bay and later Stanley, one hotel had to stand there as a monument to…well, to the good life.

Before the road, came the hotel itself. Probably to the dismay of that elite which had its country homes in the area, an East Wing was constructed around 1915 or 1916. And as the Great War drew to an end, gradually more rooms were constructed – though as yet no road was built to The Repulse Bay.

No road, but…but was this a plane coming to land here? Apparently, even before the horseless carriage, the “birdless carriage” invented but a decade before by the Wright Brothers, found itself literally at Repulse Bay’s watery doorstep.

In 1918, with five American surplus seaplanes, a Hong Kong-Macau air transport was inaugurated, departing from Repulse Bay itself. A few drinks on the verandah (obviously to boost up one’s courage), and off they would go.

1920 Seaplane at Repulse Bay, by IDJ

It seemed for a while that The Repulse Bay would be limited to the sedan chair and the seaplane. Then the inevitable happened. The manager of The Hotel, one J.H. Taggart, acquired his own car – the first Rolls Royce in the Colony (and a white one at that). Naturally, a road was called for…if only to show off the car.

In 1919, there were no less than 400 cars. And The Hong Kong Hotel Company finishing off the first stage of The Repulse Bay, prompted the government to finish the road, so that they could have an official grand opening on January 1, 1920.

c.1919 Repulse Bay Hotel under construction, by eternal1966c1

The road was completed, the hotel was completed. And in those oft-quoted phrases from the South China Morning Post, on January 5, 1920, it was exclaimed that “it is doubtful if anywhere in the East there can be found a more desirable spot for rest and recreation than The Repulse Bay, or a more elegantly equipped establishment catering for the comfort of the public.”

January 1 must have been quite a day for pre-Tatler socialites. Not only were they impressed with The Hotel, with its frontage of 150 feet, with its grand entrance, and its brilliant decorations. They danced till dawn to the strains of “The Repulse Bay Waltz”, they watched “great streams of automobiles rushing over the new road,” and they compared status. It seems that the road from The Hotel actually went all the way to Stanley. But only the highest officials were allowed to take it.

1920s Cars parked at the Repulse Bay Hotel

The cars came and went on that wonderful January 1st, and a few days later, special buses were enlisted to leave from Pedder Street’s Hong Kong Hotel (it took an hour to make the trip – probably twice as fast as the same distance on a summer Sunday in the 1970’s).

Those not invited to the grand opening were not denied their social do’s though. A “tea dansant” was to be held the following Saturday with dining and dancing until midnight. On Sunday, orchestral concerts were to be heard, along with dining on the verandah, and within a few weeks, The Repulse Bay was really the only place to go, darling, for anything!

A description circa 1920 is very much like The Hotel today. “It is approached by a well-made road, leading to the main steps, in front of which is a miniature Italian Garden, artistically laid out and provided with a fountain. From the steps the visitor reaches a very spacious balcony 14 feet wide which runs the entire length of the front. The hall, with its floor space of 3,500 square feet, runs into a verandah. Each bedroom will be 20 feet square (the rooms weren’t quite completed when this was written), and each has its own bathroom “with white glazed tiles and hot and cold water.”

1920s Repulse Bay Hotel Verandah, by Moddsey

With the undoubted success of The Repulse Bay, The Hong Kong Hotel Company started work three years later on The Peninsula Hotel. But such was the labour unrest in Shanghai at the time this was temporarily discontinued, and a 52-room annex was started on The Repulse Bay, giving it 84 rooms.

The amazing thing about The Hotel was that between 1920’s grand opening, and the rather less than grand closing in 1941, so little was changed. Yes, the new annex had been built, and yes, the little saplings in the front garden were growing into enormous Flame-of-the-Forest trees. Traffic increased, especially on the weekends, and the back garden – almost 200,000 square feet of flowers, shrubs, herbs – became grander and grander. The Hotel took over the Lido for development and maintained the Beach Road for a while. But basically, they wanted to confine themselves to making The Hotel itself a grand and glorious place.

1935 Aerial view, by IDJ

1930s Tea on the lawns, by IDJ

How could (or can) one compare it? The present manager, Daniel Reeg, says that the closest comparison would be an English country mansion transported to the Orient. Others say that the style of The Hotel overlooking one of the most picturesque bays in Asia, moulded its own design.

Whatever it was, Hong Kong, long before the post-war tourist boom, had one of the loveliest, conservative, charming hotels anywhere in the East.

Who stayed here? Royalty inevitably made its way to the south of the island for a few days, while film stars like Tyrone Power and Douglas Fairbanks would not miss it. The Hotel even inspired a poet in the 1930’s, who penned these less than immortal lines, while sitting on the verandah:

“To right and left the noble hills
Rise serenely, and beyond,
Looking out towards the boundless Pacific
are seen
The sea-girt isles
That like to rich and various gems inlay
The unadorned bosom of the deep.”

The irony was that only a single place in Asia might have better catered to the tourist in those days – Japan.
One of the rhapsodizers at the opening was aware of the comparison, and gently chided the government authorities on the matter:

“Most of us have some slight knowledge of the beauties of Japan, and the really brilliant manner in which the authorities of Nippon have catered for the convenience of tourist and resident alike. Hong Kong has long lagged far behind in this respect.”

The Japanese might never had read this – but by 1940, when the flames of war were being fanned, Hong Kong took no chances. The British forces used The Hotel as headquarters to keep open the road between Stanley and Aberdeen…just in case. The women and children were sent to Australia “for the duration,” but had already drifted back to their husbands by 1941. And on December 20, 1941, a whole patrol of Japanese had established themselves in a garage at the end of the driveway.

Now began three days of fighting. At first, the Royal Rifles of Canada and Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps drove out the Japanese – but they entered the West Wing of The Hotel by the next evening, setting up machine guns at each end of the corridor.

Major Robert Tamplar of the 8th Coast Artillery Regiment, put the gun out of commission. “We rolled grenades along the beautifully carpeted corridor for all the world as if we had been in a bowling alley. Yells of chagrin and the abrupt silencing of the machine gun told us our aim was accurate.”

If the Japanese were out of The Hotel, it was only temporary. They took refuge in the hills behind and bean sending volleys of mortars down. The bandstand was destroyed, the rear was sprayed with bullets which shattered a greenhouse in the rear garden and left pockmarks in the stucco walls.

The troops abandoned The Hotel by December 23rd for Stanley, but wisely felt that it would be better for the civilians to take refuge, hoping that the Japanese would treat them as non-combatants. To a certain degree, they were right. When the Japanese invaded The Hotel, few were threatened. When one sick patient was about to be attacked by a group of excited Japanese, the nurse, one Miss Mosser (sic. actually Sister Elizabeth Mosey), stood between her charge and the soldiers.

“You will have to kill me before you get to him,” she told them. They retreated.

Over 150 civilians were taken from The Hotel to Eucliffe, a castle-like mansion nearby, and The Repulse Bay became just one more building in “The Captured Territory of Hong Kong.”

Unlike other Japanese headquarters in Bangkok and Manila, little damage was done to The Repulse Bay during the four years of occupation. It was used partly as a hospital, partly as a recuperation centre.

One manager of The Hotel, Andrew Ostroumoff, recalled what it was like in those days. As a prisoner of war, he was sometimes sent to Repulse Bay to pick up sand to be used to help quell fires resulting from American bombing raids. “We used to see lines of Japanese soldiers walking along Beach Road in their white hospital pyjamas for exercise.”

By the end of the war, The Hotel was not in shambles. But it was hardly in good shape. After the surrender, it was used as a barracks for British soldiers. And a few years after that, it was restored to something resembling its past glories…with a bit added.

The addition was a 373-pound bell discovered in 1960 in the Canton's Hotel basement. The Chinese inscription on the bell says it was donated to Fuk Tsien Tong Temple in 1608 by three men. How the bell got from Canton to The Repulse Bay, nobody knows. But Mr. Reeg has a theory that the Japanese themselves brought it down, as a kind of war booty, expecting to take it back with them once the Allies surrendered.

They never did. The bell is on display now in the lobby.

Re-decoration of The Hotel took many years. Naturally the large wonderful old ceiling fans in the bamboo bar were kept (though other rooms were air-conditioned). Naturally, the main verandah was kept intact with its superb view of the bay. But now The Repulse Bay came up with the idea of setting a buffet – and this is still one of the stupendous sights of Hong Kong. With choices of salmon, prawns, mackerel, oysters, sardines, dozens of cold dishes, 30 salads, dozens of hot dishes, cakes, pies and one of the more startling fruit selections and cheese boards in Asia, it can take its place as one of the best buffets in the world. Book early to get a seat on Sundays as The Repulse Bay makes it a point never to rush guests along. One must sit and savour and sip and survey the surrounding scenery for as long as it takes.

1957 Repulse Bay Hotel verandah

In 1973, the “new annex” (those 52 rooms built in 1925) were demolished to make room for high rise apartments…but the 32 original rooms happily remain.

So does the impeccable famous Peninsula Group service, perhaps the best in Asia. With 190 staff catering for the 32 rooms (plus of course the deluxe catering in and out of The Hotel), The Repulse Bay still has standards not found elsewhere.

“Let’s put it this way,” says one old guest. “they don’t take short cuts…ever. You almost never see a roomboy or waiter. But when you need something, there he is, instinctively, ready to serve.”

Perhaps what makes The Repulse Bay so unique for the Colony is how self-contained it is. With staff quarters at the back, the staff lives around The Hotel, swimming in the bay, working, sleeping, caring.

1960s Repulse Bay Hotel, by Mike

With the back garden still a massive and overwhelming sight (probably the largest garden in the Colony), The Hotel is kept constantly brimming with flowers. While the enormous kitchen grows its own dill, marjoram, thyme, mint, fennel and its own cherry tomatoes. The seafood comes from around the corner in Aberdeen. The garden is used for barbeques in the summer, while the Reading Room (before the war reserved only for resident guests) serves its fine fondues during the winter.

As it was in those heady 1920’s, The Repulse Bay is still a favourite amongst royalty and artists. Greece’s Prince Don Carlos and Princess Sophie came here on their honeymoon; Princess Axel of Denmark and Prince Peter of Greece all came here. Orson Welles found shelter in The Repulse Bay, as well as Ava Gardner, Marlon Brando, Shirley MacLaine, John Mills, and David Niven. Love is a Many-Splendored Thing was filmed partly here, and the Reading Room was used as a venue in the Oscar-winning Coming Home. One might come upon Peter Sellers at a Sunday buffet, or William Holden by the old fountain in the garden.

The Hotel has also had its own characters. St. Patrick’s Day was traditionally a day for bad behaviour at The Repulse Bay; mysterious gold-brokers would show up with poodles in one arm, mistress in another, to stay for years. And one woman, known to long-timers as “Miss Jingle Jangle”, for her jewellery, stayed in a suite at The Repulse Bay – but would steal all her food from the Hong Kong Club to take home for dinner.

Yet The Repulse Bay isn’t known so much for its eccentricity as for its grace, its charm, its harking back to another day, another era. Hong Kong boasts that it lives for tomorrow. Which makes a hotel surviving on its past wonders, its vernal splendours, its spacious rooms, its splendid cuisine, its care and its comfort, all the more rare and all the more rewarding.

1980 Repulse Bay Hotel, by A E Tse

The Repulse Bay Hotel was demolished in 1982, just two years after this article was published. The following photos were taken that year by Cliff Atkins, shortly before the Hotel closed for business.

If you visit the site today you'll find that the modern Verandah restaurant looks just like the photos of the old hotel shown above. However it is a modern replica, built on the site of the old hotel, and opened in 1986.

If you have any memories of the old hotel to share, please could you leave a comment below?

Thanks to the late Dan Waters for holding on to these old magazines, to Annemarie for finding them a new home, to Phil for scanning and transcribing the article, and for The Peninsula for letting us give the article a second lease of life here on Gwulo.

Further reading:

• More photos & memories of The Repulse Bay Hotel
• Report from Miss Matheson (the Hotel manager in WW2) on events at the Hotel from the outbreak of hostilities on December 8th until December 24th 1941.
• Photos of Repulse Bay

When: The sign they're holding shows the date the photo was taken, and will help answer several other questions too:

Who: The sign says they are the "D. Grs.". The "Grs." stands for "Gunners", but I'm not sure if the "D." is short for another word, or if they were split into groups A, B, C, D, etc. Suggestions welcome.

The text on their jumpers shows they were part of a larger group. Here's an enhanced view of the jumper on the man at the left of the back row:

It reads "87 COY RGA". The RGA were the Royal Garrison Artillery, and one of their jobs was to man the coastal defence batteries around the British Empire. These men were part of the 87 Company of the RGA.

What: They're standing next to one of their guns.

I think it is a 6-inch gun, based on the similarity with this diagram:

6-inch guns were widely used in British coastal defence batteries.

Both views show the back (breech) of the gun, where the shell is inserted. After inserting a shell, the gunners have to seal the back of the gun by closing the breechblock. The photo shows the breech open, with the breechblock swung across to the right. In the diagram the breechblock has been closed and the gun is ready to fire

At the right edge of the photo is a pole with what looks like a woollen cylinder on the end. I guess it was used to clean the inside of the gun barrel - can any of our artillery experts confirm?

A couple of other questions:

• There is a "D/Q" mark at the 11 o'clock position on the breech. Does anyone know what it means?
• It looks as though the breech is mounted in a wooden frame. That wouldn't survive the recoil of the gun being fired, so is this a training setup?

Where: Looking at Rob's list of batteries, I see three possible locations for this photo:

1. Kowloon West Battery, Tsim Sha Tsui [c.1880- ]
2. Lye Mun West Battery, Lye Yue Mun [1887- ]
3. Stonecutters West Battery, Stonecutters [1890- ]

If you click through to the page for any of those batteries, you'll see that Rob has generously shared his research to give us a timeline for each battery. Since we know the date of the photo, they may help narrow down the location. Here are extracts from the timeline for each battery.

Kowloon West Battery:

• 1906: 2 x 6" BL Mk VII guns, 1 x 10" RML mounted but not approved.  (CAB 11/57).
• 1907: 2 x 6" BL Mk VII guns. 2 x 6" BL Mk VII guns to be reduced.  (CAB 11/57).
• 1909: Not listed.
• 1915: Magazines being used to store ammunition for mobile artillery.  (WO 32/5316).
• 1917: 2 x 12 pdr QF guns.  (WO 78/5354).
• 1935: 1 x 6" BL gun (Training gun).  (WO 106/111).  (Referred to as Whitfield Bty).

Lye Mun West Battery:

• 1906: 2 x 9" RML guns, 2 x 6 pdr QF guns mounted, only 6 pdr QF approved.  (CAB 11/57).
• 1907: 2 x 6 pdr QF mounted, to be reduced.  (CAB 11/57).
• 1908: Not listed.
• 1914: Proposed revision for 2 x 4.7" QF guns.  (WO 78/5352).
• 1917: 2 x 4.7" QF guns. (Listed as Lyemun Pass, West Bty).  (CAB 11/58).

Stonecutters West Battery:

• 1906: 2 x 10” BL guns, 2 x 6” BL guns. (CAB 11/57).
• 1907: Revision of the whole of this Bty to take 5 x 6” BL Mk VII guns. Estimated cost £6,500.Work on emplacing the two flank guns was proceeded with immediately. The provision of No. 3 emplacement was commenced in 1908 and completed later that year. The provision of the remaining two guns was not considered advisable until three of the 9.2” guns at Mt Davis were mounted. Work on these two guns was not commenced until July 1911. (WO 78/5343).
• 1910: 2 x 10” BL guns mounted, not approved, 3 x 6” BL guns approved, not yet mounted. (CAB 11/57).
• 1911: 3 x 6” BL guns, 2 x 6” BL guns to be added. (CAB 11/58). 
• 1912: Construction completed in February. Actual cost £3,886. Armament 5 x 6” BL Mk VII guns. (WO 78/5343).
• 1917: 5 x 6” BL guns. (CAB 11/58).

The guns at the Lye Mun West Battery don't match, so we can count that one out. The Kowloon West Battery doesn't look to have been active around 1911 so I'd count it out too, except for the later mention of it having a "Training gun".

I think Stonecutters West Battery is the likely location of this photo, with a small chance that it shows the Kowloon West Battery instead. If anyone recognises the location (eg from the shape of the brickwork?), please let us know in the comments below.

On Warren Swire's fourth visit to Hong Kong, his photos show he'd settled into a predictable routine as far as the places he visited. There was one major change on this visit though. He'd learned a new photographic skill, panning the camera to form panoramic shots like this one, looking up the valley behind the Sugar Refinery:

Taikoo Sugar Refinery

I used the computer to make that panorama from three of his photos. Here's one of the original photos, titled Taikoo Sugar Refinery housing, Hong Kong. 

At first glance it just shows a row of houses, but that faint line running up the hillside caught my eye. It shows us the pylons that carried the cable car up to the Sanatorium in the gap at the top of the photo. Here's a closer view:

After a few photos of the housing, it was down to business and into the sugar refinery itself. This first photo captures several side-tipping trucks, that could be pushed around the refinery on the rails that were laid throughout the site.

Here the trucks would be used to move the raw materials that were used in sugar refining, but when I've seen these trucks in other Hong Kong photos, they were used to move earth around at construction sites.

Coincidentally, the refinery site was also a construction site during Swire's visit. We can see large stacks of bricks in the photo above, to the right of the trucks. Other photos show the likely destination for those bricks, a large building under construction, and still surrounded by bamboo scaffolding:

He took several photos from a high vantage point, which makes me think he went to a high floor or even the roof of that new building. Here he's looking out over the Taikoo Dockyard towards Lei Yue Mun pass, the eastern entrance to Hong Kong's harbour:

Then he moves to the other side of the building, and captures the view to the northwest

That photo shows several accommodation buildings for refinery staff in the distance, at the foot of the hill. But I think he was more interested in the shoreline where new land was being reclaimed, as he climbed the hill to take this view of the reclamation from above:

And just to be sure, took a close-up view (panorama, of course!) of the newly reclaimed land:

These were some of Hong Kong's largest construction projects at the time, and were mentioned in the Annual Report for the Public Works Department in 1924. The reclamation was mentioned first: 33,600 square feet of new land, described as "Q.B.M.L. 1, (additions to) Quarry Bay (in progress)". The "Q.B.M.L. 1" referred to the existing piece of land where the refinery stood, and is the short form for "Quarry Bay Marine Lot number 1".

Later in the report it described the building work underway:

At Q.B.M.L. No. 1, Quarry Bay, the building of the undermentioned was in progress
 - Godown (in two sections),
 - Rebuilding of the main Power House,
 - Reinforced C. C. Coal Silo,
 - Godown for storage of Raw Sugar.

Given their size, it isn't surprising that Warren took so much effort to document them.

Kimberley Road

He also paid a return to visit to these houses in Kowloon:

Though they're captioned "Mansions in Holts Wharf", we saw a similar photo in the set he took on his previous visit to Hong Kong, and identified the location as the area near the junction of Austin Avenue and Kimberley Road. The triangle of open land in the photo above can still be seen on modern maps of the area. Further confirmation comes from the second photo, as it shows the Observatory's building at the top of the slope.

Though the photos were't taken at Holt's Wharf, there was a close connection due to the houses' residents  – this was where the Holt's Wharf manager lived. I wonder if these were some of his children?

Tai Mo Shan

Finally Swire branches out to show us new scenes from a couple of outings to the New Territories. The first one started with a trip by boat to the foot of Tai Mo Shan. They were going walking in the hills, and looking at the baskets they certainly didn't plan to go hungry!

Along the way, they visited what looks like a construction site:

Unfortunately we don't have any record of the outing beyond a note on the negatives, "H K Taimoshan". So we can't tell whether this was some work connected with Swire's business, or just a team of workmen they happened to meet on their walk.

The last of the set shows the walkers resting among a jumble of boulders.

They remind me of the boulders you pass if you walk along section 8 of the Maclehose Trail, between Tai Mo Shan and Lead Mine Pass.

Golf at Fanling

Their other outing was a trip to play golf at the course in Fanling.

These are just a selection of photos from Swire's 1923-4 visit to Hong Kong. You can see photos from his earlier visits here on Gwulo (1906, 1911, 1919) and the full collection of his photos online at the Historical Photos of China website.

We've got a good selection of group photos here on Gwulo, but many of the faces remain unnamed. Here's a recent example from Barbara Harding (née Landau), showing her with form 3A at Maryknoll Convent School in 1963-4:

Barbara can spot herself at 2i, Tina Payne at 1b and Rita dos Remedios at 3c, but says though she recognises the other girls "the names have gone..." Please can you identify any of the other people in this photo, or forward it to anyone else who might be able to help?

Zoom!

You may be wondering how you'll recognise any of those faces at such a small size. It'd be much easier if we could see a larger view:

Fortunately the Gwulo website has a Zoom feature, that lets you zoom in to see a photo's details. If you haven't used it before, please take a look at this short tutorial video to see how the zoom feature works.

Here are some of the other group photos we have that I'm hoping we can add some names to. We'll start with ...

School photos

School photos are the most common type of group photo we see. Here's another group of students at the Maryknoll Convent School, though a much earlier photo taken around 1937. (As well as names of faces, we're also interested to confirm the location of this photo, as it was taken around the time the school was changing premises.)

Another school photo from the 1930s is this 1933 shot of the Prefects at the Central British School in Kowloon:

Then there's a much larger photo showing the whole school in 1939, after they'd moved to their present site.

Here's yet another photo of that school from 1949. By that time the school had changed its name to King George V school, often shortened to "KGV".

We also have photos from schools on Hong Kong island, like this 1938 photo of the Peak School:

These pupils from Wah Yan College in Wanchai:

And this group out at Quarry Bay:

Photos taken around WW2

Another cluster of group photos were taken around the war years. These two show the HKVDC Corps Signals in 1939 and 1941. Many of the people in these two photos have already been identified, but there are still a few that are waiting to be recognised:

Here are the Nursing Detachment of the Hong Kong Volunteers in 1941:

And this one from the end of the war shows a group of children among the internees at Stanley Camp. We've only identified five so far, so this is another one I hope we can add more names to.

And plenty more...

Apart from these groups, there are many more from different occasions. Some remain a mystery - this c.1930 photo of a group at the Jockey Club doesn't have any names so far:

This 1950 photo has six people identified already. We also know that the names of the other four ladies are Doreen Walker, Damaris Smith, E I Rubin, and Dorothy Nelson, but we don't know which name goes with which person. Can you recognise any of them?

Another photo from 1950 shows a group of marine engineering apprentices at the Hong Kong & Whampoa Docks main office building in Hung Hom. Most are known, but still a few remain unidentified.

To see more group photos from the 1910s through to the 1960s, please click here for the full list of group photos here on Gwulo . If you see anyone you think you might recognise, please click on the photo to see what we know about it already, follow the instructions for how to zoom in to take a closer look, then finally leave a comment if you can add anything to its story.

Can you add any more group photos?

If you have any group photos you can share, we'll enjoy seeing them. Here's how to upload a photo to this website. As you upload the photo, please jot down any names you already know in the "Notes" area, and we'll see what other names we can add.

Seventy-two years ago: our wartime diarists knew the end of the war was in sight, but would they live to see it?

The good news

They had two good reasons to believe the end of the war was coming. First there was the steady advance of the Allies as they fought their way from island to island across the Pacific. The local newspapers in Hong Kong emphasised the Allied losses at each stage, but it was clear the Japanese were in retreat. By April the Allies were attacking Okinawa, less than 400 miles away from the Japanese mainland. Barbara Anslow, interned in Stanley Camp, wrote about the attack in her diary entry for 6th April:

"Newspaper is full of landings on Lu Chius made on Sunday morning"

(The modern name for the Lu Chius is the Ryuku Islands, and the largest of the Ryuku Islands is Okinawa.)

But the big news came next month: Germany's surrender, ending the war in Europe. Here's Barbara again, writing on the 10th of May:

"Armistice signed 2.41pm on 7th May; the German people asked by Hitler's successor to keep calm and try to help dispel the feeling of hate.

We all seem to take the peace so much for granted here, because it has never seemed real to us, but I try to imagine how it is - no blackouts, children coming back from overseas, no more the dread of something happening - and the prospect of being able to settle down to proper family life again.

If it were the Japanese who had surrendered we would feel differently; as it is, we are praying that she will surrender and thus save more useless bloodshed (including perhaps our own).

Dr Talbot gave me aspirins - have headache with styes."

Plenty to worry about

Barbara's second diary entry above ends with a mention of "styes", abcesses that form on your eyelids. Most people get a couple of styes during their life, but Barbara was getting them again and again. The years of limited rations in camp left her and the other internees weak and susceptible to illness. Conditions in the city and the prisoner-of-war camps were even worse. If the war dragged on, they wondered if they'd survive another winter.

Malnutrition patients at Stanley after liberation, by Duncan Robertson

So it might seem that an early arrival of allied forces to liberate Hong Kong would be a better option but, as Barbara notes, that had its own risks of "useless bloodshed". If the Allies attacked Hong Kong, the Japanese were unlikely to surrender without a fight. On islands like Iwo Jima and Okinawa they'd developed a strategy of defence using caves and tunnels to protect themselves from the Allies' fire-power. In the fierce fighting that followed, attackers, defenders and civilians all suffered very high casualty rates.

The internees at Stanley had seen the Japanese making similar preparations. R E Jones' diary mentions them on several occasions:

"Japs doing lots of blasting locally." 26th Feb

"Blasting going on all night & day." 27th Feb

"Japs still blasting holes all over the hills & around the beaches locally." 17th Mar

"... blasting going on." 31st Mar

That's his last mention of blasting, but the work continued:

"More stuff being transported up the hills by Japs." 15th Jun

So if there was going to be a prolonged defence of the island, the diarists worried they'd get caught up in the fighting. At least there was a chance of surviving that, but there was a worse option in the back of their minds. If the Allies attacked Hong Kong, would the Japanese simply massacre all the prisoners before the fighting began?

The diarists remembered the massacres committed by the Japanese during the fighting in 1941. And though the diarists didn't know it, the Japanese didn't expect any of their citizens would survive an Allied attack. In the war-crime trials after the war, a senior Japanese official described the Japanese war memorial in Hong Kong, saying "it had been planned that the Japanese would retire there to commit mass suicide."

Nobody expected

The diarists started August with these conflicting hopes and worries. What actually happened that month took them all by surprise - indeed the Americans' use of the atom bomb took the world by surprise.

You can follow the events of August 1945 through the diaries of people who were in Hong Kong at the time. Click here to sign up, and each day you'll receive an email with photos and diary entries from the same date seventy-two years ago. It's free, your details stay private, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Join us on a tram ride through 1920s Hong Kong, keeping an eye out for these along the way:

• Typhoon damage: Several photos show trams damaged in a strong typhoon that hit Hong Kong in August 1923
• Industrial action: One photo shows a tram with a banner, “Tramways volunteers apply here”. The photo was taken during the strike and boycott of 1925-26. 
• The trams' changing appearance: At the start of the 1920s, the upper decks on trams had a canvas roof, but open sides. The canvas roof was later replaced with a solid roof, and by the end of the decade all trams had enclosed upper decks, looking similar to the trams we see today. It took time for changes to work their way through the whole fleet, so you'll see some photos show two different generations of tram.

Now on with the photos:

c.1925 Pedder Street:

Hong Kong Central 1920's:

Des Voeux Road:

c.1922 The best hotel in Hong Kong:

1925-6 Tram:

c.1920 Des Voeux Road, Central:

Tram:

Des Voeux Rd Central, c. 1925:

1920s Ice House Street:

Des Voeux Rd near old Law Courts:

Typhoon 1923:

1923 Typhoon Tram Damage:

1920s Cable Car over Queensway:

1926 Queen's Road East:

Tram Damages along Johnston Road, Wanchai (Different View):

1926 Praya East:

1928 Praya East tram line:

Wanchai Police Station:

c.1925 Happy Valley :

1920s Bowrington Canal:

1920s Causeway Bay:

Tram terminus at Causeway road:

Old Hong Kong Xmas Card:

1920's Causeway Bay Tram:

Shau Kei Wan & Aldrich Bay:

You can click on any of the photos above to visit that photo's page. Many have larger copies of the photo, and additional information about the scene.

Thank you to everyone who uploaded these photos for us to enjoy. If you have any other views along the tramline from the 1920s, please can you upload them for us to see? We're especially short of views taken west of Central, or east of Causeway Bay. Click here to learn how to upload a photo to Gwulo.

Regards, David

Further reading:

• 110 years of Hong Kong Trams in photos shows how they've changed over the years.
• "Views along the tram line in the ..." Take similar journeys along the tram line in the 1930s, 1950s, and 1960s.

This is the Jetlag edition of the weekly newsletter. Today we flew back to Hong Kong after a few weeks in the UK visiting family & friends. Though it's past midnight there's no sign of anyone feeling sleepy ...

I'll start with a few "Gwulo-ey" places we visited in the UK, then look at plans for the rest of the year, and finish with a question about what photos you'd like to see here.

UK sights

We started with a few days in London. I'd tried to go to the National Army Museum there earlier in the year, but it was closed for renovation. It's the home of the Tyndareus Stone, which used to be up on the Peak, but was moved back to the UK before the handover. The museum has re-opened, so I made another attempt to see the stone. Unfortunately, after the renovation the stone has been moved into storage, so it is no longer on display.

Still, the museum was an interesting place to spend a couple of hours, but not big enough to need another visit for a few years. The Science and Natural History Museums are a different matter, and they are regular favourites. We've also started visiting the Victoria & Albert Museum, which I'd ignored in the past. The Science Museum has a new mathematics exhibition this year, that went down well with our 11-year-old daughter, while our 14-year-old preferred sketching in the V&A.

From London we collected a hire car and drove over to my hometown in southwest Wales. A rainy day gave me the excuse to visit a couple of museums along the Milford Haven waterway, starting with thePembroke Dock Heritage Centre. The centre has two main themes, the Naval Dockyard and Sunderland flying boats. The Naval Dockyard was a shipbuilding centre for the Royal Navy, so I wonder how many of the Navy's ships that visited Hong Kong were built there?

By the time of the second world war, shipbuilding had stopped but the harbour had a new military role. During the war years, it was home to a large fleet of Sunderland flying boats, and they continued to operate there until 1957. The museum has information about the Sunderland's role in Milford Haven, and also describes their ongoing project to recover Sunderland number T9044, which sank in the harbour in 1940:

The harbour's military importance meant it was defended by a ring of coastal batteries, just like the batteries around Hong Kong's harbour. A few miles from Pembroke Dock, the Chapel Bay Fort has been renovated and opened to the public.

I used to go exploring the local forts as a teenager. Most of them are now closed to the public, so it's good to see this one open and well attended. (If you're at Chapel Bay Fort around lunch time I recommend a visit to the Wavecrest Cafe, nearby at West Angle Bay.)

Movng north, we spent a week in a self-catering cottage to the east of Lancaster.  As we drove towards the cottage, I saw an aerial ropeway running overhead:

By Humphrey Bolton, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

I paid closer attention the next time we drove past, and after noting the name of the village found it's Britain's last surviving industrial aerial ropeway, the Claughton Aerial Ropeway. Here's a description of the site, and a video of it in use.

Heading south again, we made a day trip to Chester where we met Yvonne Foley and her husband Chris. Yvonne has a very interesting story to tell, as she is a member of Liverpool's WW2 Eurasian community. Though we often hear about Eurasian families on Gwulo, I hadn't heard of this group before. Yvonne explained that the British Merchant Navy employed several thousand Chinese sailors during WW2. Some came from Hong Kong but most were from Shanghai and Singapore. When they weren't at sea they were based in Liverpool in the UK, and many of them started families with local women there. Those relationships came to an abrupt end, and the families were split up, when many of the sailors were forced to leave the UK after the end of the war. Sadly, few of the mothers and children would ever see their husbands and fathers again.

To read more about these events and Yvonne's search for families from this group, please visit her website.

Gwulo's plans for the rest of the year

The three main tasks I have on my to-do list are:

1. Publish a book of Gwulo's photos & stories.
   The draft layout is ready, so the next steps are to have the final layout prepared by a professional, and the copies printed. I'm aiming to have the printed copies ready by November, so please let Santa know you'd like one in your Christmas stocking!
    
2. Move the website to a new hosting provider.
   The reviews of the provider I'm planning to move to are very positive, so I'm hoping for better technical support than I currently get. As a bonus, their plans are also a bit cheaper than the current provider's, but provide more storage space for maps, photos, etc. (the Gwulo site is hitting the limits of the current plan we use).
    
3. Add a "Street" page type, and then start documenting Hong Kong's streets.

What photos would you like to see?

Apart from the three larger tasks above, there's also the regular weekly newsletter to prepare. Now I'm back at my desk, I'm going to clean up some old photos to use for the next few newsletters.

I know what the first photo will be - a view looking northeast from the Peak that I bought just before summer. Then for the following photos, are there any you'd like to see? eg of a certain place or theme? Please let me know in the comments below, and I'll see if I have anything that matches.

Regards,

David