Swimming pool.

Thank you Peter.

Yes, I agree it looks like the same pool and Malcolm would surely on go to one of them. I’ll add the same pin. Regards  Andrew

It is rather confusing but two threads seem to have evolved, one covering the Springboard girl and this one concerning the pool.  I have just checked the posts relating to Malcolm's gallery and see that in 2019, Phil proved that one, at least, of Malcolm's photographs was taken at Silvermine Bay so, contrary to my thoughts expressed on Gwulo, he did go there in 1952/3 - but then I ask myself, why?  Did he know the girl or the family that owned the house?  Life is full of mysteries.  Peter has a strong memory of visiting a pool very much like that pool and wall next to the springboard at a house up above Lai Chi Kok.  Is it possible that there were in fact two very similar pools?  It doesn't seem likely but maybe there were.  Andrew

Hi Phil,

I think that we are gradually coming to some sort of conclusion about the location of Malcolm Trousdale's Springboard girl photograph.  Compared with the NT pagoda puzzle it is but a brief discussion!

I don't think that it is particularly significant to your analysis, but Peter has recently pointed out that he was too young to have visited Lai Chi Kok when Malcolm took his photographs in 1952/3.  Without checking Peter's comment, I think that he wrote that his visits must have been in 1955/6, and by then Malcolm was back in England.  If the consensus is that Malcolm's Springboard Girl photo and possibly the other one was taken at Yick Yuen, then it follows from those dates that the structure that Peter recalls at Lai Chi Kok cannot have been moved to Yick Yuen.  Somebody, maybe you, has suggested that crazy paving facades on structures and walls were fashionable in the early 1950s and if as seems fairly clear there was a link between the two places, similar fashionable stonework could have been used. I have a vague recollection that crazy paving facades were quite popular in England - but, as a teenager, I would not have been interested in such things.

When Malcolm sent me his photographs for copying and adding to the 367 archive, they were loose, not in a chronological order and not labelled.  Frequently, when I asked my colleagues if they knew where they had been all those years ago, their memories had faded, especialloy if they only visted a location once for a very short time.  So, it has always been a problem to find locations for quite a lot of the 367 photographs.  As you might recall, we had discussions on Gwulo about several other photographs taken by Malcolm further out along the Castle Peak road, including one that turned out to be the Castle Peak police station. Memory is a strange thing and I have been proved wrong for several of my own photgraphs.  Regards, Andrew

Thank you Allison for the confirmation. I have a feeling that my finger hit a wrong key and my reply to your previous comment flew off unfinished.  If so, I wrote something along the lines that old photographs often throw up questions about where, when, what do they show and who took them?  It is good to have somebody with family connections to be able and happy to add to the debate.  Well done.  Andrew

Thank you Allison.  Are you able to upload any more photographs showing how Yik Yuen used to be?

Hi Geoffrey,

If you zoom in on your wife's previous photograph showing you standing alone, almost below where the springboard girl would have posed, you can clearly see the crazy paving wall and the concrete canopy to the left of where you are standing.  You loaded that image on Tuesday 2021-06-22 at 2157 on the Springboard girl thread and I am inserting it here for you to see.  The two threads on this topic (resulting from two photographs being involved) have mde it rather difficult to keep track of the discussion!  Well done to your wife for providing this great piece of evidence.  Andrew

Yick Yuen swimming pool.jpg, by Geoffrey2

Hi Thomas,

I'm not sure whether you refer to one or both pool photographs that Malcolm took, but the following might be of interest. The standard lens used in 35mm cameras throughout the 1950s had a focal length of 50mm.  Some cameras, mainly Leica, had interchangeable lenses and a few guys on the camp had one but it was a fiddly job to change the lenses so they tended to use just the standard 50mm one.  Leicas were also much more expensoive than the Agfas or Voigtlanders that we usually bought and I opted for an Agfa Silette L camera, which was pretty much state of the art. My best guess is that Malcolm used something similar probably an Agfa or Voigtlander - the latter being a bit more popular, but it would almost certainly have had a 50mm lens and would have been used for all his photographs.  I don't think that a 50mm lens would be a wider angle lens than is usual in more recent times.  Maybe perspective is a more likely cause of any 'confusion'.  Regards, Andrew

Hi Thomas, and everyon else who has been following these two threads.

I had thought that my contribution to both the threads about the swimming pool, now known to be at Yick Yuen on Lantau, was finished.  BUT read on.  I think that the answer to your question is on the photograph.  At the extreme right you can see the spring board - which is not as high as one would believe from looking only at the photograph of the girl posing on it.  The crazy paving wall, concrete canopy and gate would have been just off the photograph to the right.  Malcolm would have been standing on the poolside at the shallow end.  The fence, the path and the curious passers-by would be a bit further round to the right. Your red circles on the section of the Yick Yuen map off the Geolnfo Map which is on the other thread agree with this perspective, and the pavilion and steps leading up from the poolside are quite clear.  I hoped to add your map section but haven't been able to do so. 

{C}{C}{C}Swimming pool., by Malcolm Trousdale{C}{C}{C}

Immediaterly beneath your map Alliyeung posted that 'according fr my aunt, she said use to have a side entrance to the waterfall'. That must be the small gate that is located beneath the concrete canopy. You can see that the chain link fence on that photogrash matches very well with the one visible on Google Earth Street view - even down to the lower fence on the raised wall section with the three or four plant pots on it and the full height section in front of the men. The section that had the plant pots on it is now almost hidden underneath some large plants and according to Street View there is now a long line of plant pots.  I suspect that the fence is probably the original one.  See the Street View image below that will show how things have not changed - including the bamboo still flourishing through the hole in the canopy, and the steps up from the poolside are still there.

Yick Yuen side gate, by Andrew Suddaby

Meanwhile, I wondered whether the girl is actually one of the people sitting by the pool.  I'll enlarge my file copy and see whether she is there!  WOW!  I have done that and am pretty certain that of the two girls sitting beneath the umbrella at the left of the photograph, the one on the right is indeed our Springboard Girl.  See my very poor quality enlargement below.  She is the one sitting behind the white towel on the table.  She has long hair and just below the table top one can see her bare tummy and, by today's standards, her very modest bikini bottom. I also see that there is a third, empty chair at that table.  Was Malcolm actually with the two girls?  That might explain why he was there and took the photograph of her on the springboard and why she was looking directly at Malcolm.  Her pal is wearing a full one piece costume.  Mystery after mystery!  Andrew

{C}Bikini girl.jpg, by Andrew Suddaby{C}

{C}{C}{C}Springboard girl., by Malcolm Trousdale{C}{C}{C}

{C}Springboard girl photos.jpg, by Andrew Suddaby{C}

Above you will see that I have made an annotated copy of Malcolm's swimming pool photograph taken at Yick Yuen in 1952/3, and have inserted a small copy of the Springboard Girl photo in order to show the angle from which it was taken.  Please excuse the missing word 'photographer' after my word 'good'.  I think you will agree that Malcolm must have taken the Springboard Girl photograph from somewhere close to where my red arrow points. Malcolm being a talented photographer was probably lying down to get the atmospheric angle that he wanted. I think that this scenario fits well with Geoffrey2's colour photographs from 2019 and with others.  Andrew

Hi Geoffrey2

Sorry. I didn't realise that your blue arrow was pointing at the position of the building with the verandah on Malcolm's photograph.  Was it a large summerhouse?  I'm afraid that I couldn't make anything out but now see what you mean.  Many thanks.  Andrew  

Hi,

The thought had also crossed my mind that the angle at which the Springboard girl appears and the background are compatible with the use of a longer focal length lens.  However, such a lens would have been VERY unusual in 1952/3.  Even four or five years later when I was in Hong Kong, I don't recall any of my contemporaries using anything other than a camera with a 50mm lens.  One guy had a Leica with interchangeable lenses but, as far as I know, he only used the 50mm one.  Remember that I have said that Malcolm was good photographer.  Even I, a not very gifted one, had access to a good dark room at R.A.F. Little Sai Wan and I am pretty sure that Malcolm would have done his own developing and printing there.  In that case he was probably able to crop and adjust images.  When he became a professional photographer in later years in England he had ample opportunity to work on them before sending, what I think must have been digital copies, to me in the early 2000s.  On balance, I'd go for a standard 50mm lens with him lying down to take the photograph.  I too thought that the bag on the table looked rather like a camera bag.  It might have been, and that would support the view that he had more than one lens - but nobody I knew had such a thing, and I am not at all sure whether such bags existed in the early or mid 1950s.  I carried a UV filter, a lens hood and a small range finder in their small individual leather cases all strapped to my camera case strap.  As far as I can remember none of them was ever used!  Regards,  Andrew

This compilation shows the building up the slope from the swimming pool in 1952/3 and 2015.

Yick Yuen building.jpg, by Andrew Suddaby

Hi Allison. Yes, that is very probable.  I suspect that if there were several maids they might each have had a room in that building.  At R.A.F. Little Sai Wan (Siu Sai Wan) there was a row of individual rooms in two blocks at the Chaiwan end of the camp.

As you will have seen on both the threads about the swimming pool at Yick Yuen, there is a lot of interest about it.  If you are able to ask your family for any memories of what it was like, or still is, I am sure that people will be very interested to hear from you.  Regards Andrew

Thanks tkjho.

If I had zoomed in on the photograph, I'd have seen that the interior did not look like typical maids' quarters.  I think that your suggestion that, as the building was in a very prominent position at the top of lawn, it was more likely a pavilion / summer house possibly used as changing rooms for the pool.  Andrew

Is it possible that the building, which had a very good location in the garden, was used for guest accommodation? Andrew