I've listed some of the recent highlights below, but you can visit the What's New page at any time to see all the latest additions to the site.
General
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Thanks to Annemarie Evans for inviting me on to her weekly radio show, Hong Kong Heritage. We started off walking from Lok Fu to San Po Kong, exploring some of the historic sites we passed along the route. Then we finished up at Bleak House Books, our local English-language bookstore, where we sat and looked at some of the photos and stories in my new book. Here's a link to listen to the recording of the show, and here are some photos and notes that go with it.
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Did these vertical white lines on the wall beneath Signal Hill have any purpose?
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Looking for information about KCR Freight Wagons Post-1949
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Looking for Postal Guides (Post Office Guides) that the Hong Kong Government issued annually, especially from the 1930s and 1940s.
Places
- Kowloon
- 37 To Yuen Street, Yau Yat Tsuen [c.1957- ]
- Junction of Canton Road and Peking Road [c.1890- ]
- Hau Wong Temple, Kowloon City [c.1730- ]
- Kowloon Rifle Ranges (1st location) [????-????]
- TST Bars
- 007 Bar [????-????]
- Red Lion Inn (5th Generation) [????-c.2010]
- Sky Room Night Club & Bar [????-????]
- New Territories
- Hong Kong
- Fenwick Shipyard [1880-1905]
- Hua Nan Motors [????-????]
- The Lookout [c.1935- ]
- Mermaid Bar [????-????]
- Parkview Mansion, 70 Tai Hang Road [1962-1983]
Book news
The pre-launch offer ended with 247 copies of the new Gwulo book sold, so a big thank you to everyone who ordered. I'm pleased to see that's around 10% more than we sold in the pre-launch for Volume 3, which is reassuring. (Pre-launch sales of Volume 3 were less than Volume 2, which were less than Volume 1, which meant I was worried that interest in this type of book had dried up.)
Worldwide
The orders came from all around the world - as well as Hong Kong we've sent books to Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and USA.
Airmail services to Canada and New Zealand are still suspended, but books have already reached most of the other countries. One record-breaker reached New Jersey in the USA just seven days after we sent it!
Reviews
If you've enjoyed the latest book's photos and stories, I'll be very grateful if you could review it, to help introduce it to new readers. Volume 4's page on Goodreads doesn't have any reviews yet, so it'll be great if you could give it a star rating and / or a short review. Or if you're in a club whose members are interested in Hong Kong, and that has a newsletter or an internet discussion group, a mention there would be appreciated.
Bookshops
After we'd sent out all the pre-launch orders we switched to delivering books to local bookshops. Gwulo's books are now on the shelves at:
- Bleak House Books (San Po Kong)
- Bookazine (Many locations)
- Chung Hwa Book Co. (Many locations)
- Commercial Press (Many locations)
- HK Maritime Museum Gift Shop (Central)
- Joint Publishing (Many locations)
- Kelly & Walsh (Pacific Place)
- St John's Cathedral Bookstore (Central)
- TheBookshop (TST)
- Vibe Book and Music Shop (Mui Wo / Silvermine Bay)
Thanks to Bleak House Books for this interview:
And thanks to Bookazine for adding the new book to their Top 10:
People
- 1863 Jurors List
- Stanley Camp internees:
- Charlotte Mabel BIRD (née MAY, aka Charles / Birdie) [1905-1992]
- Alfred Richard OSBORNE [c.1898-????] and son Edmund Norman OSBORNE [1927-2004]
- William RITCHIE (aka Bill) [????-????]
- Cholera victims
- Alfred BARTON [c.1864-1885]
- Charles Robert PHESSE [1857-1885]
- Can you identify any of these men in the HKVDC No 3 Eurasian (MG) Company?
- POWs:
- Gilbert Alexander HARRIMAN [1900-1981]
- E D C LONGRAINE [????-????]
- Russell Alfred Ernest WATSON [1910-1974]
- Other:
- A. Alarachia
- Charles Joseph BRAINE [1814-1890]
- James MacKenzie CAMPBELL [1856-1885]
- Jose Phillippe DA COSTA [1835-1885]
- Ye Chor DEWSON (née LEE, aka Yin Ping / Rita) [1928-2018]
- James Henry KYNOCH [c.1882-1926]
- Victor ORLOFF [c.1912-1959]
- The Rodger family at the China Sugar Refinery
- Organisations
- Hongkong, Canton and Macao Steamboat Company [1865-1958]
Photos
Regular contributor Andrew Suddaby has posted more photos from his visit to Hong Kong in 1981. I'll post a few samples below, then you can see all the photos in his 1981 gallery.
Mike asks if anyone can identify the date / location / people / occasion in these family photos:
Click to see all recently added photos.