Where Strange Gods Call: Harry Hervey’s 1920s Hong Kong, Macao and Canton...
As a young American, Harry Hervey dreamt of travelling to Asia. In 1923, he arrived to spend time in Hong Kong, Macao and Guangzhou. His impressions of southern China are lyrical and detailed,...
View ArticleWanderings in China: Hong Kong and Canton, Christmas and New Year, 1878/1879
Inveterate Victorian traveller and prolific artist Constance Gordon-Cumming roamed far and wide, from the Scottish Highlands to the American West, from the islands of Hawaii to southern China. Even...
View ArticleLING-NAM: Hong Kong, Canton and Hainan Island in the 1880s
Benjamin Couch “BC” Henry was a missionary in Hong Kong and southern China in the second half of the 19th century. Yet he was much more too – a keen observer, a skilled naturalist and an intrepid...
View ArticleChina Revisited: a series bundle
China Revisited is a series of extracted reprints of mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth century Western impressions of Hong Kong, Macao and China. The series comprises excerpts from travelogues or...
View ArticleTime Tourists: Extinct mammals go on holiday
Everyone loves dinosaurs, but so many other groups of wonderfully weird (and often giant) animals used to roam the Earth too – they just never had as good a publicist. The planet has seen tons of...
View ArticleOctopus: The Pioneering Story of the World’s First Contactless Payment Card
Nowadays most people are familiar with payments using contactless cards, or even mobile phones. But few know that just after Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997, the city launched the world’s first...
View ArticleSearching for Billie: A journalist’s quest to understand his mother’s past...
Ian Gill’s first visit to Hong Kong in 1975 takes an unexpected turn when he meets his Chinese mother Billie’s friends, colleagues and fellow ex-prisoners of war, lifting the veil on a tumultuous past...
View ArticleRoving Through Southern China: An American’s Explorations of Hong Kong, Macao...
In the 1920s the American travel writer Harry A Franck was known to readers as the “Prince of Vagabonds”. His wanderings were family affairs and he arrived in southern China in 1923 with his wife,...
View ArticleA Danger Shared: A Journalist’s Glimpses of a Continent at War
A Danger Shared provides a searing visual history of Asia during World War II as seen by foreign correspondent Melville Jacoby. In this meticulously curated collection of never-before-seen images,...
View ArticleThe Girl Who Dreamed: A Hong Kong Memoir of Triumph Against the Odds
At the age of 14, Sonia Leung was raped by her ping-pong coach. She had moved from China two-and-a-half years earlier to join her family in Hong Kong, but she could not fit in. The family of six...
View ArticleThe Ink Trail: Hong Kong
For years, Andreas von Buddenbrock – also known as “The Ink Trail” – has been filling sketchbook after sketchbook with ink drawings that all aim to capture the places and people he comes across; from...
View ArticleHong Kong Slang
Ever feel like a chicken talking to a duck? Ever ask a girl out, only to be forced to eat lemons? Maybe you’ve been told that you’re a peanut guy? Or perhaps someone has warned you that you’re wearing...
View ArticleVolume 5: Old Hong Kong Photos and The Tales They Tell
Not your typical photo book! Meet the people of old Hong Kong through these rare photos, dating from the 1950s right back to the 1880s. There are cobblers, conjurors, compradores, croquet players,...
View ArticleBackstage in Hong Kong: A life with the Philharmonic, Broadway musicals and...
After 50 momentous years, little is remembered of the chaos the Hong Kong Philharmonic faced in its early days as a professional outfit. John Duffus arrived in Hong Kong in 1979 as its fifth general...
View ArticleHong Kong Shifts: Stories from the streets of Hong Kong
From sampan ladies and bamboo scaffolders to street cleaners, fishermen, security guards and market vendors – these workers form the backbone of the fast-paced metropolis of Hong Kong, yet they are...
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