This early 1950’s “Comprehensive View”, which appears in Stericker, John & Veronica, The Hong Kong Gift Book, Self-published, Hong Kong 1954, is one for the aficionados, and admittedly requires knowledge and observation skills beyond my own in order to get the full benefit of the authors’ informative commentary that follows: A Comprehensive View – This is a very ordinary photograph, just another ‘postcard’. Yet it is a broad scene that pushes more of Hong Kong into a view than most people would believe they could see at once. Faintly, high on the extreme left, can be seen the Matilda Hospital and Royal Naval Hospital. In the first hollow, below them, can be seen the whole of the apartment building, La Hacienda. In the next hollow can be seen the apartment buildings at Mount Cameron, built on the old Japanese War Memorial site. Below them, Royal Interocean Court, shows up gleaming white. Following that line from left to right can be seen Queen’s Garden, Douglas Apartments, and many other residences, until the heart of the new and the old city is reached. The modern buildings of Wanchai occupy the right-hand foreground with Leighton Hill Apartments on a flat hill in the centre. A complete squatter village, one of Hong Kong’s many similar problems, is depicted in the middle foreground; this village, at a guess, houses some three thousand people who remain in Hong Kong in discomfort simply because they, as do many other people, like Hong Kong. We hope that the pictures in this book will show many reasons for sharing the liking.
Essarem notes that, when their book was published in 1954, the Sterickers appear to have been living in the apartment building, La Hacienda, which is mentioned above. See: 1954 - Evening view of Lamma Channel from La Hacienda, Mt. Kellett | Gwulo