New Territories?

Andrew Suddaby
Sat, 08/22/2015 - 22:45
prevnextoldernewer
New Territories?

On reflection I have a feeling that this photograph might have been taken from the train on the south side of the tunnel.  The hills in the background look very much like the Eastern slope of the Peak and Mt Davis and the blocks of flats are much more likely, in 1958, to have been on the outer edge of Kowloon.

Date picture taken
1958
Author(s)
Andrew Suddaby
Gallery
Suddaby, Andrew (1957-58)

Comments

Hi OldTimer.  I wondered whether it was a sensible thing to load nearly all my old 1957/8 photographs of Hong Kong onto David's site but decided that more people should have the dubious pleasure of seeing what in 1957/8 was so amazing to me.  I have also got even more images (all colour) taken in 1981 and 1987 - but I have sent them to David so that he can decide how many (if any) to inflict on you all! Best wishes Andrew

Greetings Andrew, Your 1950s photos bring back warm memories of the years I grew up in HK.  Of particular are the one showing Garden factory next to the fabric drying in the sun, and your train approaching Hin Tin after leaving tunnel.   No you are not uploading too many photos.  Objects in them that may look innocuous can ignite memory and emotion in someone just as what this has done for me.

Our generation had the opportunity to enjoy the near-pristine environment of HK's country-side.  Today, those high rises across the water from Shatin - they just about dwarf the surrounding hills.  Can we still scan the distant horizon without climbing a hill, or find the same beach (and same scenery) we once swam, or retrace our steps along the Lok Lo Ha shoreline and adjacent rail track?   This is what makes your photos special to readers like me.  Regards, Peter

Hello Peter

Yes - what I only partly understood until your latest comment is the different nostalgia that people a lot younger than I am have for Hong Kong in the 1950s.  My nostalgia for Hong Kong concerns a relatively short time in my life - slightly less than a year - as part of my National Service in the Royal Air Force.  It was my first time abroad; everything was so different to the austerity and drabness of a UK still struggling to recover from the impact of the war.  The sights, smells, sounds, in fact it was almost overwhelming!  Your nostalgia is about the formative years of your childhood and I can empathise with that when I think of my own childhood during and immediately after the war in two villages in England.  When I occasionally return to them I 'see' places and people as they used to be, and the same was true when I returned to HK for short holidays between 2000 and 2007.  Over  the last week or so, when I have been loading photographs onto David's site, I have wondered whether any of the people, especially the children on my photographs will recognise themselves.  Many adults were still apprehensive about being photographed - even if one asked by gesture if it would be OK.  The children were happier and a few sweets, bananas or coppers went a long way to getting a friendly reaction from them.  Over the many years since 1958, I have also occasionally wondered how those children fared in this competitive World.  Who knows, some of them might even have come to the UK to run Chinese restaurants and I could have unknowingly seen them again!

Nostalgia is a powerful force and it seems to become more so as one gets older.

Best wishes

Andrew

 

The way I remember my train rides, this photo was taken when Andrew's train was at or about what is now Kowloon Tong Station and next to Suffolk Road.  Here, the ground as shown began to rise as the train travelled north.  On the east side of the track were farms where I walked past some papaya trees on my hike up Lion Rock.  Sunlight was not plentiful but the skillful farmer managed to produce good crops, and he kept the place neat.

I believe the buildings beyond Yau Yat Chuen were the back sides of those on Prince Edward Road, but I cannot identify where that mini barren hill was located.  Regard, Peter

 

Peter, it's amazing how your memory is able to pinpoint the location of that old photograph of mine taken from the train window at speed.  Mine was just a fleeting glimpse of what I saw as a very well kept piece of land.  It was probably the first time that I saw how intensively and well-cared for the land was in Hong Kong in 1958.  Another similar plot was - and according to Google Earth Street view still is - on the right hand side of the Shek O road opposite the golf course.  That farmer deserves a medal for keeping his small plot of land so immaculate.  I wanted to take a photograph of it in around 2005 but he was not keen and waved me on which was a pity.  In 1981 I took my wife on a local bus trip through the New Territories via Yuen Long (by then no longer the small market town that I had remembered) and to Kam Tin and Taipo Market.  There was still a great deal of the well farmed land, fish farms and duck farms in evidence but by 2000 the sprawl of junk yards and other unattractive urban businesses had claimed much of what had been a beautifully managed area of farmland in the New Territories.  I sometimes wonder whether the younger generations have any idea of how things used to be.  Mind you, there's no denying that those farmers had a very hard life keeping their land so tidy and much easier money can almost certainly be earned in the busy urban areas of Hong Kong.  Best wishes Andrew