Photo courtesy of reader Geoffrey:
This pic is surreal. Could not possibly imagine all these walking wreaths and two congregations of marching bands taking up the whole road for a funeral possession. And what about that stone wall in the middle - what purpose does it serve? Have absolutely no clue about the location once again.
Photo courtesy of reader Geoffrey:
This pic is surreal. Could not possibly imagine all these walking wreaths and two congregations of marching bands taking up the whole road for a funeral possession. And what about that stone wall in the middle - what purpose does it serve? Have absolutely no clue about the location once again.
Comments
A nullah somewhere
Kowloon Funeral Parlour
Nullahs near Temple Street
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 :
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?
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.
Nullahs
Questions for Geoffrey
More questions in by email:
I think the question asked above is why would the procession would make a detour at this point? In this photo they appear to have come out of a side street at the top of the photo, turned right, then walked a short way before making a u-turn at this junction. Why didn't they just come out of the side street, cross straight over the nullah and turn left?
MrB
Nullahs
Nullahs
Nullahs
A couple more observations:
So that leaves us with:
The map also shows that some of the buildings facing the nullas have alleys behind them, while others have an alley between them at right-angles to the nullah. If we say the block on the far side of the road has an alley between the three-storey building on the left and the low building on the right, that cuts out most of the Nam Cheong St options, leaving:
MrB
Located at last!
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.