New on Gwulo: 2026, week 34

What's new and updated on the Gwulo website:

General

• Courage in the Shadows is the newly published biography of Phyllis Nolasco Da Silva. Phyllis worked for the BAAG in Kwongchowwan for three dangerous years in WW2, controlling their agents there, and surviving interrogation and blackmail by the Japanese and their Chinese staff.
   
• Please help to put a Shamshuipo POW camp wartime diary online.
  • Barbara Harding has scanned her father's wartime diary, and has generously offered it to be included in our daily wartime diary emails. Luckily, advances in AI mean that the handwritten pages can now be converted into text automatically, with good though not complete accuracy.
  • Can you help add a page from the diary to the daily emails? There will be three steps, that should take you less than an hour in total:
    1. Use free AI to extract the text.
    2. Compare the AI-generated text with the original and correct any mistakes.
    3. Post the daily diary entries to the Gwulo website.
  • If you'd like to help please reply to this email with DIARY in the subject, and I'll send you over a scanned page and instructions on how to process it.
  • To see the finished results, you can view the first and last entries from Leo Landau's wartime diary, which I've already transcribed and posted online.
     
• Members of the Yorkshire Society in the Argyle Street POW Camp
   
• In the wartime diaries: 16 Aug 1945 - War is over!
   
• More memories of growing up in Mount Nicholson Government Quarters
   
• A King shipyard in the 1940s-1970s 
   
• Hong Kong & China history talks in the UK
  • Just two weeks to go until my talks in York (5 Sep) and Edinburgh (9 Sep) - I'm looking forward to them!
     
  • I'm going to repeat the talks in Cheltenham and Exeter in October. If you'd like details, please reply with CHELTENHAM or EXTER as your email subject.
     
  • Bristol University's Hong Kong History Centre are running their Hong Kong History Day on 5 Sep. Two speakers I recognise are Tim Ko and John Carroll from Hong Kong, both of whom give great presentations.
     
  • Then later in the month, the Friends of East Asia host host the talk Chinese Art for Western Interiors on 19 Sep in London. Colin Sheaf, ex Chairman of Bonhams Asia, will give an illustrated talk on the growing enthusiasm for “Chinoiserie” objects in the West during the 17th and 18th centuries.
     
• Unlocking the To Tsai Church (道濟會堂) Registries: A Macro-Study of Generational Shifts, Dual-Track Administration, and the 1893 Fung Family Twins
   
• A Study of the Early Hong Kong Protestant Elite: Disentangling the Relationship and Houses of Kwan Yuen-cheung (關元昌) and Kwan Yun-fat (關潤發/關元發)
   
• Erratum and Apology: Correcting the Maternal Lineage of Fung Fu (馮扶) and the Identity Conflation of Kwan Yuet-ming (關月明)
   
• Construction and Expenditure Summary: King’s College (Bonham Road School)
   
• What should we include in 'Guidelines for new contributors' for the Gwulo website?
   
• Yet another Two Gun Cohen film project
   
• Readers ask:
  • Looking for old School friends 1970s and 80s in HK-Kei Oi-Buddhist Tai Hung Collge-Caritas Bianchi College of Careers
     
  • Looking for an old friend from Hong Kong – Lau Kwok Yim (“Charly/Charlie”)

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Places

(Click a Place's link below to visit its page - you'll see all the photos we have for it, and can add your memories of the Place to its comments.)

• Kowloon
  • Club de Recreio sports field, King's Park [????-????]
     
  • Netherlands Club tennis courts, King's Park [????-????]
• Hong Kong Island
  • Aberdeen Harbour Breakwater (Western entrance) [1965- ]
     
  • Java Road Gas Holder [c.1961-c.1972]
     
  • Lok Sin Tong Leung Kau Kui College (GLA-THK 1285) [c.1992- ]
     
  • Sandilands Hut (Girl Guides HQ) [????-????]
     
  • Tsin Shui Ma Tau Village, Shau Kei Wan [????-????]
     
  • Yucai Secondary School 育才中學 [c.1977-c.1991]
     
  • Streets
    • Back Street, Tai Hang [1901-????]
       
    • Cooper Street / Brown Street, Tai Hang [1901- ]
       
    • Jaffe Lane, Causeway Bay [????-1962]
       
    • Paterson Street, Causeway Bay [c.1866- ]
• New Territories
  • Chinese YMCA Wu Kwai Sha Youth Village [1970- ]
     

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Organisations & People

(To see other pages on Gwulo that mention them, first click their name below to visit their page, then click their 'What links here' tab.)

• Robert DRUDE (aka Bob) [1889-1943]
   
• Dorothy HARDWICK (née COATES, aka Dottie) [1931-2026]

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• WW2
  • HKVDC
    • Alfred FLOISAND [????-1941]
       
    • John Mayo HOUGHTON [c.1906-1941]
       
    • Lawrence JACK [1900-1942]
  • Other armed forces
    • Alfred Cecil HOUGHTON [1894-1945], Royal Engineers
       
    • Kenneth Albert WATSON [????-????], HKRNVR
       

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Photos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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