Charles Gesner van der Voort had started his career in Rotterdam, at Holland-China Trading Company (HCHC). In 1938, he went to Shanghai for the firm. The Japanese interned him, and most other Dutch nationals, from 1943-45. In camp, he met his wife Nancy and they married after the war. After a leave in The Netherlands, they returned to the Orient, where Charles continued to work for HCHC in Hong Kong.
Twenty years before Charles started, in 1918, a photo album was made of the Hong Kong office and office staff. The Hankou (Hankow at the time) office was also photographed. Hankou is situated in between Shanghai and Chongqing, along the Yangtze river. The HCHC office was used for a short period only: 1920-1923.
<a href="https://old.gwulo.com/%3Ca%20href%3D"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hankou">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hankou" rel="noreferrer nofollow">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hankou</a>
"Hankou (Chinese: t 漢口, s 汉口, p Hànkǒu), formerly romanized as Hankow (Hangkow), was one of the three towns (the other two were Wuchang and Hanyang) whose merging formed modern-day Wuhan city, the capital of the Hubei province, China. It stands north of the Han and Yangtze Rivers where the Han flows into the Yangtze. Hankou is connected by bridges to its triplet sister towns Hanyang (between Han and Yangtze) and Wuchang (on the south side of the Yangtze).
Hankou is the main port of Hubei province and the single largest port in the middle reaches of Yangtze.
Foreign concessions period.
Hankou used to have five foreign concessions belonging to the United Kingdom (115 acres, est. 1862), France (60 acres, est. 1886), Russia (60 acres, est. 1886), Germany (100 acres, est. 1895) and Japan (32 acres, est. 1898). The German and Russian concessions ended in 1917 and 1920 respectively and those areas were administered by the Chinese government as the First and the Second Special Area.
Early in 1927, the British concession was occupied in the course of the revolutionary troubles that accompanied the Northern Expedition when the Chinese Kuomintang forces occupied the concession and showed no intention of withdrawing. "
1256 N.V. Internationale Crediet- en Handelsvereniging Rotterdam/C.V. en N.V. Wm H. Muller & Co. (Internatio-Muller N.V.) 1402 Foto album van kantoren in China.
courtesy Stadsarchief Rotterdam, <a href="https://old.gwulo.com/%3Ca%20href%3D"http://www.stadsarchief.rotterdam.nl/en">http://www.stadsarchief.rotterdam.nl/en" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.stadsarchief.rotterdam.nl/en</a>
