Hong Kong Daily Press 23 March 1933. Tracing back, these advertisements in the Hong Kong Daily Press commenced on 2 February 1933.
Date picture taken
23 Mar 1933
Gallery
Shows place(s)
Shows organisation(s)
Comments
Key date - 1933
Thank you for this find moddsey. I've just realised it gives us a better idea of when the Book Room (and presumably by extension the Emmanuel Church) were both founded - somewhere between 1930 and 1933. I had been thinking mid thirties.
Reading Room item
There was a reading room associated with the Emmanuel Church Book Room. An article in the Cairns Post, Queensland, Australia in 1936, mentions both and quotes Dr Lechmere Clift on his Church's reading room -
'"The one great lack is reading room literature. The colony is inundated with glaringly sensational and highly coloured magazines." Dr. Clift says he has repeatedly asked friends to supply sound, healthy papers, but there has not been much response. The book room is doing well, and meets a need that nothing else supplies. Hong Hong is a great jumping-off place for passengers. Missionaries drop in for supplies on their way to North China, Malaya, Philippines, Dutch East Indies, Siam, etc.'
'The shop sells Bibles in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Urdu, Chinese, Filipino and Hebrew.'
A Short Story - Reading Room Items
The British and Foreign Bible Society had made a mistake in their shipping room and sent fifty Portuguese bibles out to Hong Kong, China to the mission home of Mrs. Lechmere Clift, well known to Christians who passed through Hong Kong. At the same time there arrived in Hong Kong a retired Baptist missionary who had spent much of his life among Portuguese people and who spoke their language. Again, at the same time, the Portuguese government brought a regiment of soldiers from Portuguese Angola in Africa to garrison the island of Macao, near Hong Kong. The Baptist missionary began to work with the Angolese; many of them were saved. Twenty have recently been baptized, and the British and Foreign Bible Society has had a regular order of bibles in Portuguese......
Source: Eternity 1950-12: Vol 1 Issue 9. See: https://archive.org/details/eternity_1950-12_1_9/page/14/mode/2up?q=lechmere+clift