1946 Funeral Procession

Any idea how far the procession would travel? Would it just do a circuit in the area, or make a longer journey?

Looking on the 1947 map of Kowloon, there are several roads in the area with nullahs. They all had covered sections like the photo above, usually where side streets would need to cross over the nullah :

• Waterloo Road. The nullah was open along several sections: Soares Ave - Victory Ave, Victory Ave - Peace Ave, Yim Po Fong St - near Pitt St, then Nathan Rd to Ferry St with covers at Portland St, Shanghai St, Reclamation St, and Canton Rd. Ferry Street marked the 1947 shoreline.
• Soy Street. Nullah open from Portland Street to Ferry Street, again with covered sections at Shanghai St, Reclamation St, and Canton Rd.
• Nelson Street. Same pattern as Soy Street.
• Argyle Street. Nullah open from Portland Street to Nathan Road, and Nathan Road to the railway bridge.

Could it be any of those?

I also had a message by email suggesting another couple of nullahs in Kowloon, but they seem too far away?

The nullah photo shows the funeral procession making a U-turn at the nullah with the photographer standing in a buidling looking down over the proceedings and taking the picture. The area appears to be residemtial as well as commercial with warehouse type buildings lining the road.
 
The photo of the nullah in the middle of the road could well be that of Nam Cheong St (nullah now decked over) in Sham Shui Po or Tonkin St (open nullah) in Cheung Sha Wan.

MrB

 - I saw roadworks on Waterloo Road a couple of years back, where they had dug up the center of the road outside the Fire Station, near the YWCA. You could see the stone-lined nullah looking very similar to the style of the one in the picture. So the nullahs are still there, just covered over with concrete slabs, and with a road layed on top.

 - In section 7 of Paul Tsui Ka Cheung's Memoirs, he mentions the Argyle Street Nullah, as shown below. There's lots of information there about Hong Kong in the first half of the 20th Century.

Mongkok in 1931 - 3
The custom-built Kowloon Branch of Wah Yan College was located at the corner of Tung Choy Street and Nelson Street - Two blocks away to the east of Nathan Road, and One block away to the south of Argyle Street in Mongkok. blocks away from Nathan Road. When the school was built, it faced a wide open space in front, as by then none of the buildings which now stand to the east of Tung Choy Street up to the railway, and none of those buildings to the north of Nelson Street up to Argyle street had yet been built. Even the north side of Argyle Street was partly built.

The was a nullah running right down the middle of Argyle Street, originating from Lion Rock along the upper part of Waterloo Road. I recalled making a trip form Mongkok, visiting a relative at To Kwa Wan, by way of a route across the hills at Homantin. We started from Tung Choy Street, via Argyle Street which stopped short, one block to the east of the railway bridge. Access to the site where the junction of Princess Margaret/Waterloo Road/Argyle Street, now fronting the China and Power Buildings, could only be by way of a foot path along the bank of a nullah, from under the railway bridge. A greater part hilly areas of Homantin District were mainly burial grounds for the Dead, with the odd stone- cutters working here and there. The Diocesan Boys' School was already there, at the top of the hill, which was then regarded to be "somewhere in the wilderness".

Geoffrey says that Tim Ko was able to quickly identify this photo by the pale, roofless building near the top-right corner of the photo. That is the Yau Ma Tei Theatre, which was damaged and lost its roof during WWII.

So the road with the nullah is Waterloo Road, the bridge over the nullah in the foreground is Shanghai Street, and the bridge in the distance is Reclamation Street.