The Hong Kong History Podcast

Recordings of conversations between two Hong Kong resident neighbours, who share a fascination with Hong Kong’s intriguing and complicated history but with an emphasis on Hong Kong’s story as a major port.

Recent Episodes

Podcast

Episode 19 : How names tell us a story, Part 3: Ap Lei Pai is the wrong name

Bare text can only tell us so much. How many of us have ground our teeth when we’re reading a book that cries out for a map…and doesn’t have one? But, assisted by a bit of fossicking in archives, maps can also tell stories all by themselves. Maps of Hong Kong tells lots of them.

Podcast

Episode 20 : A ferry story

You would think, given the evolution of Hong Kong’s road network –  slow, slow, slow – and Hong Kong’s intricate coastline and 263 islands, that ferries would have been a constant in Hong Kong’s story. They were and they weren’t. They were if all one means by ‘ferry’ is something that floats that carries any A to any B.

Podcast

Episode 21 – This sporting life

In previous episodes we’ve touched on cricket and sailing, in short, a peripheral mention of the arrival of modern, rule based organized sport in China. The treaty ports played a big role in this, which we could argue had a sort of happy ending in the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and China striding large on the world sporting stage.

Podcast Hosts

Stephen Davies

Stephen Davies

Host

Stephen Davies has been in Hong Kong on and off since 1947 and his fascination with navigation and its history began with service in the Royal Navy in the early 1960s. He taught at the University of Hong Kong until 2022 when he retired, though he continues to actively research and publish.

DJ Clark

DJ Clark

Host

DJ Clark is a multimedia journalist and lecturer based in Hong Kong. He has been working in Greater China for 15 years during which time he has developed a keen interest in the history of the area. More on DJ at his website www.djclark.com