Everything tagged: chapter 3

Thanks to Raymond for confirming the address was 3, Hankow Rd. Would that have been on the South-West corner of the junction with Middle Rd - where the N.E. corner of the YMCA building stands today?

Several other people added notes.

Russian restaurants. IDJ wrote:

646 Nathan Road (former site of Lee Chun Kee and Company) is now occupied by the Tao Tak Building (which also takes up 642 -> 646).

Kowloon Junior School currently has two sites, this one next to Argyle Street, and another one over at Begonia Rd in Yau Yat Chuen. The latter is due to close down so the school can operate from a single site (i.e. this one) from 2011.

 Here is Booth's description again: "surrounded by a six-foot chain-link fence on the other side of which was a steep drop to the dusty football field of another school".

Booth doesn't mention whereabouts on Mt Nicholson he stays, just that it a friend's bungalow for the few days before they moved to the Fourseas Hotel.

It opened as a hotel in 1928, but the building was completed earlier than that. From the hotel group's website:

1927 - The Peninsula taken over by military authorities, accommodating The Second Battalion, The Coldstream Guards and a battalion of The Devonshire Regiment; soldiers vacated the hotel a year later.

1928 - The Peninsula officially opened to the public by Sir Wilfred Thomas Southorn CMG, Governor of Hong Kong.

Soares Avenue looking south east. The 7-11 on the left demarcates the starting point of the 'triangular plot' which housed the pro-Commie school. Now it is a residential block called Wing Ying Mansions.

Emma Avenue (on the right) as seen from Soares Ave. This is also one of the corners of the triangular plot which housed the pro-Communist school. The Fourseas would have looked over the road about 100 metres further up - you can see the windows from the Metropark Hotel Kowloon facing the camera to the left of the bamboo scaffolding.

You can see this on the 1949 map, marked 'Mohammedan cemetery'. It must have been cleared since then though, as now it is the site of several buildings.

Booth found the skeleton of a snake there, and notes the unusual shape of the graves. He was given the following explanation by one of the staff at the Fourseas Hotel: