Vintage Hong Kong film footage

Discussion in 'Off Topic Area' started by slipthejab, Dec 28, 2011.

  1. slipthejab

    slipthejab Hark, a vagrant! Supporter

    Some great old footage of Hong Kong. The more things change the more they stay the same! Fascinating to live here now and watch this old footage.

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIHTrmz4hTI&feature=related"]Hong Kong, Gateway To China, 1938 - YouTube[/ame]
     
  2. slipthejab

    slipthejab Hark, a vagrant! Supporter

    Another great clip - this one shows Shueng Wan district where I lived on and off for years. Amazing how little any of this has changed. Wow. My guess is a great many of the shop shown in this clip are still the same ones that are there today. In Hong Kong where property is insanely expensive I always marvel at how a shop that sells dried and salted goods can manage to keep it's doors open. The trick is not only have these families owned these shops pretty much since day one... they have MASSIVE overseas trade. Entire family run empires based on the trade of Chinese dried goods overseas. Of course now there are more cars and buses than ever in Hong Kong - but in many places this district shown in the clip is largely the same.

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UEfuPQfJSk"]Old Hong Kong Sheung Wan district 1949 旧香港上环区 - YouTube[/ame]

    I'd be curious to look at population numbers between now and then for that district... my guess is that there are now way more people living in that same spot than ever before.... first with the waves of Chinese immigrants around the 1950's and then more recently with the waves of western expatriates who can't afford to pay the exorbitant rents in the Central district any longer. :p
     
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2011
  3. slipthejab

    slipthejab Hark, a vagrant! Supporter

    The Kowloon Walled City when it still stood... a fascinating German language documentary about the enigmatic walled city. Something rather fantastic in every sense of the world this place. It doesn't exist any longer... there are other areas a tiny bit similar but this was like something out of a science fiction film (very much the basis for the cities in Blade Runner film). Unfortunately it's in German... there isn't a copy with English subs that exists. But if you have any questions on what they're doing post up the time in the vid and I can explain it. :)

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6l2vzwRj5Y&feature=related"]Kowloon Walled City , ä¹é¾åŸŽå¯¨ 1/4 - YouTube[/ame]

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6lA0FyqLZg"]Kowloon Walled City , ä¹é¾åŸŽå¯¨ 2/4 - YouTube[/ame]
     
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2011
  4. Mushroom

    Mushroom De-powered to come back better than before.

    Amazing find Slip. I used to live in Shatin when I was working for a production company. Luckily at the time they were filming a series of trailers for the HK Tourism Association, so for me it was like a free tour around the hard to get to parts of HK. As the PA I also went through some old photos at a similar time frame as the videos you put up, and mildly surprised that even back then it was a bustling city.
    (Feeling nostalgia now)
     
  5. slipthejab

    slipthejab Hark, a vagrant! Supporter

    Yes it's interesting... it's never been an idyllic calm and peaceful place. In fact finding any type of peaceful space here is the biggest drawback to living here... :bang:

    It's a Chinese city but it's so decidedly different than any other Chinese city.... though I can't' but help wish that by some magical force... they'd not wrecked and built over all the colonial buildings. If Hong Kong had it's colonial buildings intact it'd be beyond amazing. :p
     
  6. Sketco

    Sketco Banned Banned

    That's really cool slip! Thanks! Definitely not a place to be if you have claustraphobia.
     
  7. Mushroom

    Mushroom De-powered to come back better than before.

    I find that we are a throwaway culture, building over everything all the time. I took a 10yr break from HK and when I went back I still found bamboo construction sites more or less in the same place as last left it!

    I took (lost now) some beautiful photos when I went to the villages on the outskirts where its still relatively untouched. I was reminded of such places when I went to visit my in-Law's farm in Guilin.
     
  8. jaggernautico

    jaggernautico Valued Member

    fascinating find, slip, thanks
     
  9. slipthejab

    slipthejab Hark, a vagrant! Supporter

    Yes the state of construction is constant here.. much to the chagrin to those of us who live in older Chinese style buildings. In construction they are little more than concrete boxes. So when someone renovates their flat on the 1st floor with jackhammers even if you are on the 6th floor the sound carries all the way up.

    One of the biggest issues for Hong Kong is landfill space. Unlike mainland China space is a premium here... the laws in place regarding property put it that when you vacate a business or a rented premise you, by law, have to reduce the building back down to it's concrete shell. So that means all interior decor, all panels, all dividers, all facades and shop front building go in the roll away rubbish container. In any other place there would be a roaring business in used fire doors and fittings etc. - but here they get piled up mountain high in the containers and shipped off for landfill. It's a massive problem. One the government refuses to deal with.

    If you're a natural scavenger like I am... hahaha... it's heartbreak. Every time I'm walking down the street and I see them ripping out cabinet work out of a shop that's only been open a month and chucking it into the container.... the first thing to cross my mind is... 'I'll head back to me flat and get a screw driver and scavenge all the hinges and fittings'... HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Much to the horror of my Chinese girlfriend who views it as clinically insane and morally deficient to think in such a manner. :p

    At one point I furnished my entire flat (two whole rooms) with proper Japanese tatami mats. Unreal... these... proper tatami must have cost a small fortune - and someone's just dumped them in the rubbish! So I lugged them up 6 flights and kitted out my flat. Awesome.

    So yes... Hong Kong is very much the throw-away culture. Much of it has to do with the mentality that's been brought about by cheap goods from China and cheap labor in China. The older generation ('70s and '80s) thinks very differently from that. Many of them will have seen some very hard times... some came from China where life was always much harder... and some remember living in squatter areas on the south side of the island... many will remember the Japanese occupation. So they save string even. Love that type of old person. Most still work... they keep going. It's very interesting. I wonder what's going to happen to the current generations in HK. I don't hold out much hope for them. Playstation and internet are not exactly survival skills for old age.

    Yes I have reams of negatives from when I first moved to Hong Kong and was spending a lot of time in Macau... this was prior to Stanley Ho allowing western gambling concerns to come into the Macau area. So there was this frenzied rush to build over everything with cheap glittery rococo tat that they've been doing now for about 8 years. Many of the old Chinese villages that I documented back then and the alleyways and neighborhoods simply don't exist any longer. They all fell to the bulldozer. Sadly.

    Guilin will still have plenty of farms. I'd spent a lot of time there off and on. It's a brilliant place. Though it's long been very backpacker tourist oriented there are still some real gems there. Zhuang people villages, actual farmers who grow crops, salt of the earth people. Jeez... you've got me wanting to travel now! ahahahha!
     
  10. slipthejab

    slipthejab Hark, a vagrant! Supporter

    Yes that is a real issue. It takes a lot of getting used to. Like any big city you definitely change the way you deal with people. A lot of courtesies and niceties fall by the way side. You also get really good a ducking and diving into and out of traffic. For some reason when you are six foot plus in a city with this type of crowd you feel that unless you walk at breakneck pace that you are going to fall over. So I tend to be a terrible person to take a stroll with as I look at the city sidewalk the same way I surf... I choose a line and look for the flow... and then drop in and don't look back. :p - so as of late I'm looking to move out of the city proper where I live now... and get a bit further out. Perhaps it's age or a way to deal with the stress of a big city.
     

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