New Territories. Tai Po Market

Thanks Phil

On a return trip, probably in 2005, I took pretty accurate 'then and now' photographs at all those Taipo Market sites and included them in an audio visual 'film' comparing the old Hong Kong with the new.

Phil

My short audio visual 'then and now in Hong Kong' is 22 mb big and I haven't the faintest idea how to put it on the web!

Andrew

Hi,

I had to buy a new computer last week and I thought that all my files from the old one had been transferred to the new hard drive. Unfortunately I cannot find any of my audio visual files!  So, far I have only been able to view them on DVDs that I have but the appropriate one contains the Tai Po section simply as part of a file covering all my then and now images of Hong Kong comparing 1958 with more recent years.  The DVD also contains two other films that I made about HK and totals something like 500mb.  I'll have to have another really good look and with a little bit of luck I might have got them saved onto an external hard drive. Keep your fingers crossed.  I also haven't the faintest idea how to extract the Tai Po section and then put it onto the Google site that you mention.

Best wishes, Andrew 

Hi Mark

Have found three very similar versions on my external hard drive but all three cover all my then and now images of HK (Litle Sai Wan, Central, Kowloon, Big Wave Bay Shek O, Cheung Chau, Shatin, Tai Po Market, etc.).  They differ in that two versions show images '1958' with each one just followed by 'Now'.  The first one is a Movie Clip (mpg) that opens with Windows Media Player and is 99 mb.  The second one is a WMV file and opens with Films and TV and is 87 mb.  The third is possibly better as I managed to adjust the now images to fit the then images more precisely - although there is sometimes a deterioration in definition as I had to do some cropping, etc. to achieve that.  This means that the 1958 image fades more or less precisely into the Now image and then back into the original 1958 one.  It is a Movie Clip (mpg) file and opens with Windows Media Player and is 144 mb.  I suspect that they are all too large and given time I should be able to remake a much shorter movie of just the Tai Po Market pictures on my Seriff software adding, e.g. Cheung Chau if wanted, although that would of course increase the file size. Let me know what you think might be best and I'll try to do it - but I am very busy just now as my wife is not well.

Best wishes

Andrew

Hello Mark

All my 'then' and 'now' images of Tai Po Market that appear as part of my audio visual slide show already exist, one above the other, within my 1957/8 folder in the 1950s section of the Gwulo gallery.  The only difference is that in one of the three slide shows I manipulated either the 1958 photograph or the 2005 one to get them to fade more or less precisely into each other.  Have you been able to see those images in my 1957/8 folder?  If so, I don't think that there is really any advantage in putting them into seperate slide show - or am I misunderstanding you?  Thank you for your kind words about my wife.  She is back home and coming along quite nicely but needs quite a bit of care just now.  

Best wishes, Andrew

Hi Peter,

I'm fairly certain that the fruit behind the little boy manning his small stall in front of his parents'' stall were melons - probably water melons. I think that the little boy was selling sticks of sugar cane.  On my next photograph taken on the steps up to the railway station immediately after the fruit stall one, the little girl had rushed across to see my pal Tony - probably to ask for a few small coins. She had a lovely smile and looked into his eyes so beseechingly.  We always tried to hand a few small coins to the children but there were so many of them, all thinking that we must be very rich.  It was very difficult to give to some and not to all the others who would come rushing up. It was better, where possible, to buy a stick of bananas or some other fruit and hand that out.  It was obvious to everyone that when the last one had been handed over there were no more and receiving a gift of a bit of fruit was not the same as begging for money so better for the psychology of the children.  Life must have been very hard for everyone in the 1950s, especially the grown ups.  Fortunately, children are usually very resilient.  Your story about your young friend who had to drop out of school is a sad one.  I hope that he went on to have a happy and good life as an adult maybe, as I commented once before, owning a Chinese restaurant in England!  I might have even, unknowingly, met him or any of those children on my photographs here!

best wishes, Andrew

Good afternoon, Peter

I am sure that you are quite correct.  Water melons would probably have been much larger and would have had a darker colour than shown on my photograph and my own recollection of pomellos fits quite nicely.  I remember being disappointed at how little edible flesh there was in such a large fruit and it was so bitter.  Similarly, the little boy's produce would have had a dark skin on each stick if it were sugar cane.  I remember buying sticks in 1958 and enjoying chewing into the fibre to taste the sweetness and then spitting out all the bits of fibre. I guess that you'd be arrested if you did that in modern Hong Kong and handing bananas to children would definitely be a no-no! My wife and I enjoyed deep fried sweet doughnut sticks on one of our visits to Hong Kong.  Great but a bit sticky!

There must be an enormous and largely untapped source of old memories of Hong Kong spread around the World by all the Chinese people who left for a different and hopefully more prosperous life in the West. Do their children feel an urge to go back to Hong Kong to seek out their roots.  I guess that developments, esdpecially in the New Territories, have completely changed most of the places that they or their parents would have known. I wonder how many ex-pat Chinese people even know about Gwulo, this wonderful website that David manages on behalf of us all.

Best wishes, Andrew