Boys playing 1952. | Gwulo: Old Hong Kong

Boys playing 1952.

Boys playing 1952.
Submitted by Andrew Suddaby
Authors: 
Ewart Hunt

Was this a game of pitch and toss? The small boy fast asleep on his brother's back doesn't care. (Andrew S)

Date picture taken (may be approximate): 
Tuesday, January 1, 1952
Gallery: 
Hunt, Ewart (1952-53)
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Submitted by OldTimer on Fri, 2019-02-01 10:11.

Greetings.  Playing marbles was a popular game for boys this age in the 1950s. Well before they built the flyover, I played marbles with my street friends at Maple Street playground, and on the sandy road median on Cheung Sha Wan Road’s most easterly block. Based on the boys’ postures, I believe they were playing marbles, although no marbles can actually be seen.

The boy’s long-stretched hand and their warm clothing suggests it could be a firecracker during Chinese New Year. To not make a loud noise (baby sleeping), I sometimes sliced half-open a firecracker, lit up its fuse, and watched it sizzle. Regards, Peter

Submitted by Andrew Suddaby on Fri, 2019-02-01 16:25.

Hi Peter,

I think that you are correct.  Pitch and toss was where you threw small coins at a wall.  There is no wall here so Marbles seems more likely. I like your story about adapting firecrackers to make them sizzle and not bang!  Do you remember the ones rather like marbles that had a clay casing?  They came Surrounded by sawdust(?) inside boxes and wentboff with a lovely CRACK when dropped or thrown onto a hard surface. I guess they were banned years ago.  Happy days.  Andrew

Submitted by OldTimer on Fri, 2019-02-01 23:44.

Street games I and other boys played in the 1950s:

Marbles – Every boy places the same number (typically 2 or 3) of marbles inside a marked circle on the ground about the size of a dinner plate. We take turns using our favourite marble to knock them out of the circle and so keep, and the same player continues as long as his shooting-marble does not rest inside the circle. As we get rich, we also place 10-cent coins inside the circle which are more difficult to knock out. Instead of marbles, we (early 1950s) fold discarded cigarette packages into triangles and knock them out using bottle cap filled with wax inside to increase their weight/inertia.

Hitting another 10-cent coin – From a distance, you use your coin to hit the other player’s coin. You keep his if you hit it; if not he picks up his and tries to hit yours where it comes to rest.

Firecrackers – If these boys were playing firecrackers, theirs would be the mini type about 3 mm in diameter. They come in a string which you can untie to separate. The gunpowder is black in colour. For a bigger bang, bigger firecrackers were legal and the gunpowder is silver in colour – popular brands Rooster, Elephant, and Swallow my favourite; they had something to do with my hearing today. We like to lit and flip it high into the air. The next few days the arm and shoulder got sore. The fireworks sold by street vendors give a small multi-colour burst not quite 10 metres high. I remember the meat-ball size clay mines. A few didn’t explode on first attempt until you throw it hard at the ground/wall.

Kite flying and fighting – a solo game, unless you kite-fight, you see the other players from a distance on their rooftops, from teens to adults. Kite cost 10-20 cents in mid-1950s.

Then came toys that use batteries, but by this time, my time and worry were about school marks.

Regards,  Peter

Submitted by Andrew Suddaby on Sat, 2019-02-02 00:37.

Hello Peter,

What a lovely account of your childhood pastimes!  In the late 1940s in England, my friends and I also played quite happily in the largely vehicle free streets were I grew up. On arriving in Hong Kong in 1957, I thought that the streets were SO BUSY, but they were basically empty compared with today. Most of our childhood games revolved around lots of running about - no chance of that generation of children becoming overweight. There was rather a mysterious progression through the springtime with each game giving way to the next one, without any apparent planning.  I cannot recall the exact order but apart from the year-round running and hiding games we had spinning tops, marbles, mass low key fights and battles, but with nobody getting hurt, ‘French’ cricket, English cricket, and goodness knows what else.  Then there was our usual encroachment into the girls’ territory when we muscled in on their hopscotch and skipping, but juvenile male brute force could  never match the agility of our sisters.  I’m afraid that fireworks were only available for a very short period around 5 November, so we missed out on the mayhem that you relished.  In 1957/8 I occasionally bought a box of the clay ‘bombs’ or a short string  of the small firecrackers.  It was great to see and hear them go off.  Things have changed quite a bit!  Regards Andrew