What's new and updated on the Gwulo website:
 

General

• Overseas readers: The new Gwulo book is now available to order from Amazon (affiliate link).
   
• Reports of:
  • The 1871 Typhoon
     
  • The Principal Medical Officer of Hong Kong's Royal Naval Hospital's report covering 1941-45
     
  • Life as a lighthouse keeper in the 1960s
     
• Dates for your diary: 
  Next month I'll be giving a couple of talks, and it will be great to see you if you can attend. The first talk is about Hong Kong's people, based on my latest book but also incorporating photos and stories from the previous four volumes. The second talk is about Hong Kong's military history, using photos in my collection and from the Gwulo website to introduce the subject. I'll come back with more details and how to book in a future newsletter, but wanted to give you the dates first.
  • 14 March, Thursday evening. 'People' talk at the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre on Kennedy Rd, hosted by the RAS. If you can't make a weekday event, there's a second chance to see it...
     
  • 16 March, Saturday afternoon. 'People' talk at Vibe in Mui Wo on Lantau. Then towards the end of the month is the second talk...
     
  • 26 March, Tuesday evening. 'Military History' talk at the United Services Recreation Club (USRC) in Kowloon, hosted by the OMRS.
     
• Readers ask:
  • Journalist Dick Cloake took his trusty typewriter into Stanley Camp and it survived the long internment. Now his daughter would like to ask: where would be a good home for that typewriter in the long term?
     
  • Who lived in the shop house at 75 Un Chau Street?
     
  • Was Col LA Newnham in charge of HK's Military Intelligence in 1940?
     
  • Which year was the Katherine Building on Nathan Road built?
     
  • What are the buildings in these 1950s photos, possibly taken around Ping Shan in the New Territories
     
  • Which part of Lantau Island does this photo show?
    

    

     

  • What is the story shown in the carvings on the camphorwood chest?
    

    

  • Looking for information about:
    • Elizabeth Starchenko. (As a Russian she was not interned by the Japanese, so has anyone got any information about her during the period 1942-45?)
       
    • identifying old military items found on the hills
       
    • education in left-wing schools, such as Heong To Middle School and Piu Kiu Middle School, in the 1960s
       
    • working Class British Women working in Hong Kong in 1930's
       
    • the Xavier family in Hong Kong
       
• Gwulo's Jurors List project needs your help to type up a page and get us closer to putting all of the Jurors Lists online.
   

Hong Kong history galore!

• UK readers, if you have a family member who was in Hong Kong in WW2, check the newly catalogued collection of wartime record cards at the National Archives to see if they have a card for your relative. Read the full story in their article: Life and death in Hong Kong during the Second World War. Thanks to David Wallingford for letting me know about this.
   
• Still in the UK, Bristol University's Hong Kong History Centre is producing a series of videos, where they interview different people who are exploring Hong Kong's history. The first two are now online:
  • Video #1: Dr Vivian Kong - this starts with an introduction to the series from Professor Ray Yep, who is the interviewer in these videos. Ray introduces Vivian, and we hear about her journey from Tuen Mun to Bristol, then get in to the meat of her research, looking at Hong Kong in the early 20th century, why local people came to value 'Britishness', and some of the barriers put in place by the British authorities.
     
  • Video #2 Dr. Kwong Chi Man - here we meet our local champion of Hong Kong's military history. Chi Man talks about how he got interested in the topic, then about his recent book looking at Hong Kongers in the British armed forces - which opens the door to a social history of these people's experiences, and a new view of how people in apparently the same situation could have such different interactions with the British. The video ends with a brief tour of Chi Man's excellent website, The Battle of Hong Kong 1941: A Spatial History Project, which uses digital maps to present the battle in new ways.
• Back in Hong Kong, on Friday evening I was happy to see Patricia O'Sullivan who had just arrived from the airport. During this visit Patricia is giving a series of four talks - details on her website. I've already signed up for her free talk on 2 March at the Maritime Museum, Fire-fighting on Land and Sea.
   
• I'm sure Patricia will have her books for sale at the talks, so it's a good chance to highlight Zolima's recent review of her second book: Hong Kong reads: Women, Crime and a Window Into Hong kong History.
   
• Zolima regularly publish articles about Hong Kong's history, and a recent one from Annemarie Evans about collectors caught my eye. Many collectors become experts on the history of the items they collect, and we're lucky to have had several collectors share their knowledge here on Gwulo. In her article, Hong Kong Collectors: It Started With A (VW) Bug, Annemarie meets Andrew Ng to learn about his collection of anything and everything related to Hong Kong's motoring history.
   
• Finally, on Annemarie's weekly Hong Kong Heritage radio show, I enjoyed the recent episode where she met Vaudine England to hear about why archiving information - whether at the family or business level - is so important to preserving history.

People

What's new and updated on the Gwulo website:
 

General

• Meet Delfino NORONHA [1824-1900], one of the leading lights of Hong Kong's Portuguese community in the 19th century. The biography is written by Stuart Braga, Noronha's great-great grandson.
   
• Back in 2014 I posted 110 years of Hong Kong Trams in photos, showing how the appearance of Hong Kong's famous trams had changed since they first started running in 1904. I grouped trams into 'generations', according to the big changes in how they looked.
  Ten years have passed, so to celebrate the trams' next big birthday Joseph Tse has posted Hong Kong Tram types - entering 120 years. You'll see his new article updates how the generations are defined, using the same system that has been adopted by HK Tramways.
   
• After the recent newsletter looking at Jan Jan's Map of Hong Kong from 1958, WYIP has kindly uploaded his copy of this slightly newer map, Sun Sun's Street Map of Hong Kong from 1967. Here's a section, showing the area around Happy Valley:
  

  

• We don't often get to hear of events in WW2 from the Japanese viewpoint, so it is very interesting to read Keiji Makimura's memories of the Japanese surrender, available in Japanese, and translated into English.
   
• Sorry if you received two copies of last week's newsletter. For some reason the newsletter mailing service decided to send it out two days running. Fingers crossed it returns to its usual behaviour with this newsletter.
   
• Thank you to the seventeen new patrons who responded to last week's newsletter, and have signed up to support Gwulo  - I appreciate your help! (I was asked why the link to become a patron took them to another website called 'Patreon'. Patreon is the company whose service I use to manage collecting your contributions.)
   
• Thank you to volunteers David, Grace, joybot, simoncopley, and wingcli2015 for typing up the Jurors Lists for 1870, 1882, 1883, and 1892.
   
• Readers ask:
  • Daughter is trying to find out what happened to her late mother Betty Mary Theresa LLOYD OR XAVIER (née HO) [1922-????]
     
  • Which hotels could have been used as Naval Officers' accomodation in the early 1930s?
     
  • ​​​​Who made up the Stanley Camp tribunal in 1945?
     
  • Tower Records opens in Hong Kong in the 90's - which year?
     
  • What did 7, Victory Avenue in Ho Man Tin look like in the 1950s?
     
  • What were the REME Light Aid Detachment doing in Hong Kong in 1956-57?
     
  • Looking for information about:
    • service records and / or insignia of the R.N. Dockyard H.K. Fire Brigade, & Hong Kong Fire Brigade
       
    • 1967 riots primary sources
       
    • the Japanese Community in Hong Kong
       
    • Moritz Freimann who was licensee of the the Land We Live In Hotel / Tavern from 1899
       
    • William Barker, who arrived in Hong Kong in 1904
       
    • the Shirazee sisters
       

Updates on the new Gwulo book

Some good news with Volume 5 is that airmail services are working well again. The last few overseas orders have gone to customers in Australia, UK, and the US, and all have arrived in under two weeks. The last few years have seen all sorts of headaches with overseas mail, so it is great to see shipping times get back to their pre-Covid standards.

Thank you to two of those overseas readers for their reviews. Patricia O'Sullivan has posted her review of Volume 5 to her website, and also lets us know her favourite photo in the book. For the record, my favourite is this one at the bottom of page 21:

Thanks also to new reader jenchou, who dived in with a purchase of the full set of five books:

The existence of the 5 volumes of Old Hong Kong Photos and The Tales They Tell came to my attention on Facebook via the Hong Kong - The Past page. I jumped on the website and ordered the books less than a week ago and they were delivered this morning!! So speedy and the books arrived in impeccable condition.
 

Each book and the photos are most beautifully produced to the highest quality. They worth every single penny!  In the fast changing world and the Hong Kong I knew disappearing fast, to have a glimpse into the old Hong Kong before I was even born keeps Hong Kong alive in my heart.

Closer to home, Hong Kong readers can now find Volume 5 at these additional bookstores:

• Art & Culture Outreach Books, in Causeway Bay
   
• SUP Retail (Hong Kong) Limited, better known by the names of its bookstores: Joint Publishing / Chung Hwa Book Co. / The Commercial Press. They also run an online bookstore, My Book One

And finally, thanks to Jill Fell who has reported the first mistake in Volume 5. If you've noticed any other mistakes, please could you add a comment for each mistake with details? Then I can be sure to get them all corrected when it is time for a reprint.
 

People

What's new and updated on the Gwulo website:
 

General

• This is the last newsletter of 2023, so let me wish you health and happiness in the new year ahead. I'll follow up with a roundup of 2023 and a look at plans for 2024 in future newsletters.
   
• Patricia Lim's excellent database of the inscriptions on gravestones in the Hong Kong Cemetery includes a few where the stone is so worn that the text can no longer be read. Selkirk has done additional research to identify the person buried in each of those graves (scroll to the bottom of the page).
   
• The stone tower in the grounds of the Kowloon Hospital has been identified as a memorial built by the Japanese in WW2 (scroll to the bottom of the page).
   
• Readers ask:
  • Was Axel Napoleon OLSSON [1920-1950] Swedish, and what happened to the Swedish community in Hong Kong in WW2?
     
  • Looking for info about Ian McKelvie of Whampoa Docks 
     

Update on the new Gwulo book

On 19 December, the printer delivered all 1,000 copies of the new Volume 5. Hurrah!

That was three days earlier than expected, which meant we could mail out all the pre-orders before Christmas.

All local pre-orders placed before Christmas should have arrived by now - if yours hasn't, please let me know.

I've heard from overseas customers that their pre-orders have also started arriving. If you placed a pre-order from overseas before Christmas, and it hasn't arrived by 10 January, please let me know.

I took a quick look through a copy of the new book before we got busy with mailing, and I'm very happy with how it looks. Next there was the nervous wait, wondering how readers will react. Happily the first feedback was positive - thank you to Bob Bunker:

I ordered a couple of copies for Christmas for our sons... The books arrived just in time for me to sneak a look before gift wrapping - couldn't put it down... David's ability to find these photos, and his in depth analysis of what is going on is amazing, along with the deft way he weaves the stories that lie behind them... Can thoroughly recommend...!

To anyone who has enjoyed Volume 5, please could you take a moment to leave a rating or a review over on Goodreads or Amazon?

As well as trips to the post office, I've also been out delivering to bookstores, so Volume 5 is now in stock at: Bookazine, Hong Kong Book Centre, Hong Kong Reader, Kelly & Walsh, Lion's Ink Bookstore, St John's Cathedral Bookstore, and Vibe.

You can still order Volume 5 online from Gwulo, and I'm also going to keep running the offer of 15% off when you order the full set of volumes 1-5. The five-volume set was a popular choice among the pre-orders.

One last request: if you have had any problems placing an order via the Gwulo website, please could you let me know? Yesterday I noticed that the 'add to cart' button on the page for Volume 5 wasn't working. It's fixed now, but if there are any other problems lurking out there, please let me know.

People