1950s Sampans at Shau Kei Wan

Who: The main characters in this scene are the people on the sampan in the foreground.

As far as I can remember, in most if not all the photos we have of sampans, it is a woman rowing. (While in the photos we have of western-style rowing boats, the crews are always men.) This photo follows the pattern, with a smiling young mother rowing the boat.

Her two passengers are presumably heading out to one of the larger boats in the harbour. The fishermen typically wore dark clothes, not lighter colours that show the dirt more easily. So perhaps the man at the front of the boat is visiting on business, or maybe he is heading back to a boat after attending some special occasion ashore?
 

What: The boat above the lady has two large baskets hanging off the back. They are two very different designs, so were they made for specific uses?

Several of the other boats are festooned with laundry, including a fancy three-level washing line on the boat in the distance (Update: JohnS notes the three-level line is more likely being used to dry fish). Must have been good drying weather that day!

Where: The postcard originally had this caption at bottom left, identifying the location as the harbour at Shau Kei Wan.

When: This is a Real Photo Postcard (RPPC), but as they were sold in Hong Kong from the 1920s through to the 1950s, it doesn't narrow down the date very much. 

Sometimes the back of an RPPC is pre-printed with details of the paper's manufacturer, and that can help pin down the date.

No manufacturer's details here though. Instead the paper looks to have been sold with a blank back, then the postcard seller used an inked stamp to add the text and the 'W H' stamp box. From the Hong Kong RPPCs I've seen, those with pre-printed backs were mostly produced before WW2, while those with stamped backs came after the war. Based on that, I'll guess the 1950s for the date this photo was taken.

If you can spot any clues in the photo that help identify the date, or if you have a mailed copy of this postcard with a postmark that shows a date, please let us know in the comments below.
 

Gwulo Photo ID: ET001
 

Trivia: This is one of three photos I bought in London last weekend, just before heading back to Hong Kong. I'll post up the other two in the next few days.

I didn't spend much time on Hong Kong history during the holiday, but we did manage to see a few sites with broader historic appeal: castles at Clun and Montgomery, a tour of St Paul's Cathedral in London, and an excellent afternoon at the Roman baths in Bath. I'd visited those baths once before when I was a child on holiday with my own parents. The video displays and the portable audio guides are so much better than anything we had on that first visit.
 

Further reading: I enjoy exploring photos that expand on themes I've written about before - we looked at Shau Kei Wan and Hong Kong's other fishing villages in Volume 3 of my books. You can also find more photos of junks, sampans, rowing, and baby carriers on the Gwulo website.