Episodes
Season 1
Beginnings
We make a stab at answering ‘how come Hong Kong’, paying close if occasionally erratic attention to modern Hong Kong’s origins in British trade with China…
What happened next
The story wanders on through Hong Kong’s patchy early years, when clever drafting by the Chinese side in the 1843 Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue, left the newly founded port of Hong Kong looking at thin pickings…
The blockade
Hong Kong gets over its teething pains and begins to develop as a major international port city. The scourge of piracy is brought under some sort of control. Thanks to a huge emigrant movement from Guangdong Province, ferry and passenger traffic become big business…
Steamy disasters
In the fourth episode Stephen takes us through the turn of the 20th century up until World War 1…
World War 1
In this episode Stephen and DJ discuss the period leading up to the First World War, what happened in Hong Hong during the war and the period after…
World War 2
In this episode Stephen takes us through the days before the Japanese invasion to a detailed account of the invasion itself and then onto a short discussion about the war days in Hong Kong…
Season 2
After the war
In the first episode of a new series Dr Stephen Davies discusses post war Hong Kong and the challenges it faced….
Ship breaking to container port
In episode eight Stephen explains how after the Second World War Hong Kong became a global powerhouse in ship breaking and then how that slowly transformed into one of the world largest container ports…
Hong Kong’s fishing industry
In this episode Stephen talks through the ups and downs of the Hong Kong Fishing Industry. He also discusses the kids of boats that were being used and why many continued to use traditional boats well beyond their years…
Troubled times
In this episode Stephen discusses the social unrest in Hong Kong during the 1960s & 70s and follows with a look at how the issues were resolved during the 1970s…
The port
In this final episode of season two Stephen Davies talks about Hong Kong as a port…
Season 3
Historians and Hong Kong: A most colonial ‘Colonial’
Over around a century and a half Hong Kong’s story has been told by professional and amateur historians. A few names became scores following the explosion in Hong Kong studies after the 1970s. Today there are as many and more netizens and bloggers…
How names can tell us a story, Part 1: Kwok Acheong
Almost wherever you are there will be streets named after town worthies, or national eminences, or significant entities and events. Sometimes, particularly in larger towns, the names can reveal additional historical detail. What the main trades were and where they concentrated, for example…
The small details: Edgar Goodman RMLI
The English historian Edward Thomson once wrote of the “enormous condescension of posterity” towards those of us – overwhelmingly most of us – who are not movers and shakers. Yet it is those lives, humdrum and invisible though they often are, that actually make moving and shaking possible…
Going sailing: The crew of the Kitten
Imperialist Britain spread modern-style, rules governed, organized sport – very much the creation of a newly leisured, comparatively affluent early Victorian world – all over the world. One of those sports, though never up there in popularity and participation like football and cricket, was sailing…