A Travel of Hong Kong Mainland Defence Ruins (World War II) - further information

Submitted by David on Tue, 02/03/2009 - 13:42

Here's a place to find / add further information related to the above book. Scroll down to see a list of the Routes from the book, click on the one you are interested in.

The book

The book gives a series of walks through the New Territories, each accompanied by a map, lots of photos, and further information. You can approach it as a hiking guide-book - each route takes you through an interesting part of Hong Kong's countryside. But if you'd like to see some of the remains of Hong Kong's wartime history you'll find them especially interesting.

Thanks to reader T for introducing the book to us:

The book mentioned might have been the one talking about WWII Military sites - New Territory chapter.   It's ISBN number is 978-988-210-639-0  The book was written by Mr Joe Yip, who seems to be working in the ambulance service for more than 14 years.

There is a Preface in English, and another short piece talking the Sai Wan Cemetary and Memorial and the Defence of Hong Kong.

The editorial team could be reached through    volunteer411225@yahoo.com.hk or edit@rightman.net

If you quote that ISBN at a local book store (eg Commercial Press), you'll be able to buy a copy.

One problem for us illiterates is that it's almost all written in Chinese. So it was suggested to add this companion.

We'll work in a similar way to the Booth companion. Below you'll see an entry for each route in the book. If you click on the route, you'll see a map and a list of places mentioned along that route.

And if you don't see them yet, please jump in and make them, it's not hard:

To add a new route:

Add a new Forum Topic, and give it the name 'Route NN - HK Mainland Defence Ruins', changing NN to be the number of the route, eg 03 for Route 3.

In the body, paste this text:

Places to see along Route NN, from the book 'A Travel of Hong Kong Mainland Defence Ruins (World War II)'.

If you want to add a new Place to the map for this Route,  use the 'Create content / Place' link at the bottom of the menu on your left to create the Place, and remember to add the tag 'RNN-HKMDR' so that it shows up on the map.

Don't forget to replace both 'NN' with the number for this route.

If I see any new forum topic like this, I'll add it in to this page for all to see.

What places to add?

I'd suggest adding in the starting point and end point of the walk. For some of the routes I found it took a while to work out exactly where they were in Hong Kong.

Then add in any places from the book that you think will be of interest, together with any notes.

And ideally, add in any extra places that you think will be interesting to people walking the route. eg Craig's recent discovery of tunnels around Devil's Peak. In that way we can add some value and give something back to the book's authors, rather than just translating what they've written.

Comments

Thomas writes:

From his Yahoo! Blog he mentioned he is going to roll out another book of the same theme, but it would be for military ruins on Hong Kong Island.  It would be rolled out in July 2010, during the Hong Kong Books Fair.

If you read Chinese you might like to take a look at this.

Thomas, any idea if he plans to release an English-language version of his books?

Regards, David

I doubt Mr. Yip will publish an English version of the book.  He is now busy working on his book for HK Island which is due for publication in July this year.  Thereafter, he might work on an Outlying Islands version.  Also, it probably doesn't make sense to publish an English version given the likely very limited demands for it.

Hi there,

The Travel of Hong Kong Island Defence Ruins (World War II) is due in a few days.  The cover is already available in Mr Yip's site.  If you fancy elbowing your way into the Hong Kong Book Fair, you should be able to find it in the 正文社 booth 3C-D22,1B-E16.  You might be able to meet the auther there too.

I'd rather get the book in one of those 2nd or 3rd floor book stores somewhere.

Best Regards,

I bought a copy today in my local Circle-K so it is now available to the general public ($98). It looks pretty thorough and should Gwulo decide to do an English companion (note to self: finish off the remaining mainland walks!!) then I think this site already has an immense amount of information related to the walks outlined in the book.

The author includes those units’ crest / cap badge that he saw on the headstones, as ‘regular / reserve’ units deployed in the battle of Hong Kong.

He calls ‘regiment’ as ‘battalion’.
He lists ‘Cambridgeshire Battalion’ as one of the regular units.
He captions ‘REME Regiment’.
He includes a photograph of ‘Loyal Regiment’ and the caption says ‘Royal Regiment’,
He makes no mention of the nationalist guerillas whilst including the communist guerillas.

I haven’t bought this book.

isdl