Hong Kong-born Portuguese scholar José Maria ‘Jack’ Braga was one of a group of amateur historians, including Austin Coates, whose spadework dug up unexpected riches for later authors to utilise.
Building on the Hong Kong Golf Club would be robbing future generations of a vital recreational asset and Hong Kong’s most precious ecological resources.
Economic relations between Hong Kong and the Philippines flourished in the 19th century, with one industry playing a significant role: rope making. Factories in Hong Kong sourced fibre from the Philippines.
With Hong Kong at a crossroads, the time is ripe for another book providing broad-ranging insight into the city, a feat not attempted since 1957’s comprehensive history work Hong Kong Business Symposium.
With freedom of speech and free access to the books of one’s choice in Hong Kong narrowing, a writer finds solace in one of life’s most basic certainties.
When Queen Elizabeth was crowned in 1953, Hong Kong celebrated with lion dances, fireworks and loyal toasts. For King Charles’ coronation in a now-foreign country, there was no such pomp and circumstance.
Loaded terms like colonialism are easily bandied about, but often poorly defined. Second-rate academics have built whole careers on the false premise that all colonisers were white, for instance.
British merchant Thomas Beale built a vast aviary in Macau in the early 19th century that housed birds from tropical Asia, including the exotic bird of paradise many naturalists had thought to be mythological.
The man responsible for highlighting Hong Kong’s status as a centre of cultural exchange was a scholar born in Guangdong who made the colony his home after the war.
UK newspaper The Guardian had historians expose its founders’ links to the Manchester cotton trade fed by slaves. How would Hong Kong react to similar revelations about its profiting from the opium trade’s misery?
Christopher D’Almada e Castro of Hong Kong’s Portuguese community was a distinguished lawyer who assisted British intelligence at great personal risk while in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
As Germany’s wartime White Rose resistance group demonstrates, the perils of speaking truth to tyrannical power are real, but history will remember those brave souls with the reverence they deserve.
An Australian painted a picture of Hong Kong both wonderful and weirdly familiar in a 1923 travelogue belatedly published last year. He marvelled at its roads and night vistas, and disliked its drab buildings.
A prolific and distinct school of painting flourished in Hong Kong after the Pacific war, and two individuals stand out for their invaluable contribution.
Among Hong Kong historians, one of the most significant yet underappreciated researchers was an American reverend who believed in quietly working on his hobby.
Back when ready-to-wear was the height of fashion, handmade dresses were the everyday domain of most women in Asia – with travelling tailors offering their takes on the latest trends.
In Hong Kong, a post-war philanthropic scheme to get farmers back on their feet was later extended to Gurkhas returning to Nepal. The training and supplies it provided would prove vital.
‘When the facts change, I change my mind,’ wrote British economist John Maynard Keynes. But if historical facts haven’t changed, what then?
From Worcestershire sauce to curry paste, the now ubiquitous Hong Kong-style takes on Western staples – often copied versions of the local garrison’s rations – helped spice up life.
The end of European rule in Asia gradually led to the disappearance of a once-thriving community of Eurasians, and gone with them is a distinctive way of life.
Most young, local Portuguese men in post-war Hong Kong with musical ambitions saw their dreams slowly extinguished by financial responsibility and marriage, but not radio legend Uncle Ray.
Hong Kong’s Covid contact tracing was ineffective, but a pre-digital mechanism for nipping sexually transmitted diseases in the bud worked for British servicemen in the city a century ago.
New Year celebrations in Hong Kong began as a low-key affair for foreigners, then became an occasion for general late-night revelry – which, in 1993, led to a fatal crush in Lan Kwai Fong.
The practice of placing heavily fragranced flowers near coffins to mask the smell of decomposition led to such blooms being associated with bad luck – something this new arrival to the region learned the hard way.
Ribbon-cutting ceremonies have become a mandatory, if monotonous, ritual in Hong Kong, with beneficiaries including one light-fingered governor’s wife.
Hong Kong has long been dismissed as a ‘barren rock’ despite having grown into the wealthy city it is today. So where did the phrase originate?
Beginning in the early 20th century, Hong Kong gardening manuals distilled horticultural expertise to help newcomers to the city. Today they are time capsules.
Art depicting familiar southern Chinese scenes was popular among the merchants and officials of the China Trade, such as Hong Kong’s Sir Paul Chater.
Sikhs have served Hong Kong since its earliest days as a British colony and had a lasting impact on its development, as did other minority communities.
Hong Kong journalists’ local history columns and radio shows are disparaged by some as mere ‘musings’, but in fact provide a picture of ‘Old Hong Kong’ like nothing else.
