In February I visited Barbara Anslow for a chat about her memories of moving to Hong Kong in 1927, aged eight years old. Below the recording I've added photos and additional notes.

(E-mail subscribers, if you can't see the player, please view the web version of this page.)

Additional notes:

In 1904, aged just 21, G. Warren Swire became a director of his father’s firm, John Swire & Sons Ltd. Two years later he was sailing east to visit the company’s operations in China. Fortunately for Hong Kong’s record, he was a keen photographer.

Here’s what he saw on that first visit…

1906-7 Dockyard construction

The first project from the 2016 to-do list is finished, an upgrade to the main map we use. Enhancements include:

• 10x faster than the previous version
• Markers and all the old paper maps are now on the same page
• You can change the transparency of the old maps so it is easier to compare them with modern maps

Here's a video showing how it works (subscribers, if you can't see the video please click http://gwulo.com/node/30984 to view it on the website):

Here's a summary of my recent visit to the UK, listing some resources for anyone interested in old Hong Kong.

UK National Archive

A few interesting finds from this visit:

1850 Green Bank plans & map. UKNA ref: MPG 1/158 

This map shows the area we call Lan Kwai Fong today, but look how different it was in 1850 ...