Typhoon Hong Kong September 1937 - Hall Personal Film

Hong Kong
1937
Silent
5m

Poignant amateur footage records the aftermath of one of the worst typhoons in Hong Kong's history.

In the early hours of 2 September 1937 Hong Kong Island was struck by its worst typhoon to date. These poignant scenes were mostly shot that same morning by an amateur filmmaker who surveys the destruction: ships run aground, houses levelled, thatched roofs blown away, collapsed piers, women and children clearing rubble, and many giant ocean liners - half submerged like bath toys.

Hong Kong harbour was the seventh busiest port in the world in the 1930s. When the typhoon hit, the harbour was unusually crowded with ships moved on from Shanghai, which had been recently invaded by Japan. Among the ships pictured here are the Chinese steamers An-Lee and Eng-Lee, the Tymeric of Glasgow, and Dutch liner Van Heutsz, which was carrying over 1,000 refugees from the Battle of Shanghai. The harbourside's picturesque dwellings were also totally destroyed, along with around 1,800 fishing boats, and the small fishing villages of Sha Tin and Tai Po, which were wiped out by a tidal wave. Around 11,000 people are thought to have been killed.

Hong Kong - Fragrant Harbour

Discover a Hong Kong before the tide of modernity swept all before it, a land of striking contrasts where old and new, European and Chinese shared a crowded island.

Hong Kong before the skyscraper: it's barely possible to imagine today. But this collection of films shows island life before the steel-and-glass towers and the elevated expressways, when Hong Kong and the neighbouring New Territories were still parts of a rugged but rapidly developing outpost of the British Empire.

Visit the genteel colonial centre, including the long-gone Hong Kong Club; explore the waterfront streets around Wan Chai and Causeway Bay, before the major land reclamations of the 60s and 70s pushed them inland. A few select landmarks in the footage can still be seen today, notably Aberdeen Bay, the Peak Tram and Victoria Harbour. But what these films preserve is a largely lost Hong Kong, a city whose recent past is vanishing and whose ever-shifting landscape is fading from recognition.

The films are rich in contrasts. Traditional Duanwu Festival dragon-boat racing share the waters with Royal Navy warships enjoying the interwar calm. While peasant farmers bend their backs in the New Territories paddy fields, expat Brits tour the colony in motorcars. As today's Hong Kong faces yet more uncertainty and change, these films highlight a very different time on the crowded island where East met West.