Date picture taken (to nearest decade for older photos):
1956
My mum lived first at 70, Lion Rock Road and later at 19, Prat Avenue. I don't know which of those addresses she's standing outside here. <Read more ...>
Date picture taken (to nearest decade for older photos):
1953
My mum loved dancing and here she is circa 1953 ready to light up the dance floor. She used to work in Kowloon's NAAFI shop - wherever that was? - where she started learning English from the servicemen who used to pop in. Like many couples of her generation, she met my dad at dance club but my dad never told me which one the boys of 28 Squadron used to frequent! <Read more ...>
Date picture taken (to nearest decade for older photos):
1958
I'm probably no more than a week old in the arms of my mum in 1958. It's amazing how quickly she got her figure back! I wonder where she was taking me? The chungsan she's wearing was lilac with black beads. It was my absolute favourite of hers and I've never forgiven my sister for losing it during a house move! When she did the housework or cooking, mum used to carry me on her back in a traditional cloth baby-carrier with four straps, known as a meh dai, but she called it a meh meh. <Read more ...>
Philip Harding Klimanek (1883-1965) was born in the Czech Republic, at the time his place of birth was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In ca. 1905 he started to work for Holland-China Trading Company, in Hong Kong.
In 1939, when Charles Gesner van der Voort arrived in Shanghai to work for the company, he was Charles' superior. In a letter home he wrote: "Played chess with Klimanek in the French Club" [translation Pieter Lommerse, the French Club was Le Cercle Sportif Français, a fashionable place to be in the 1930s and it still exists today]. <Read more ...>
Date picture taken (to nearest decade for older photos):
