6.14 Clocks and Watches Industries

The watch accessory industry, mainly watch cases, watch-faces and watch-bands, emerged in the 1950s.

In the 1960s, manufacturers produced clocks and watches by combining local produced accessories with imported movements.

Within two decades Hong Kong evolved into the largest exporter of watches in quantity, with an export value of HK$2,983 million in 1978.

From the 1980s onwards, electronic watches dominated production, enjoying such popularity that Hong Kong retained its position as the world's leading exporter.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.13 Labour Life in the Sixties

By the late 1960s, 561,563 people were factory workers. Most were either semi-skilled or unskilled, and had received no education beyond the primary level.

Because of the potential threat of cheap labour from China, the local workforce had to accept long hours and low wages. The riots in 1966 and 1967 were, to a certain extent, a refection of their discontent, as evidenced by the Government's efforts to improve labour conditions in the last few years of the decade.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.12 Flashlight and Lantern Industries

The flashlight industry in Hong Kong began in the 1920s but flourished in the postwar years. Most factories diversified their output from flashlights to the manufacture of battery-powered lanterns of tinplate in the 1950s and early 1960s, and then of plastic in late 1960s and 1970s.

The hurricane lantern was first introduced in Hong Kong in the 1930s and the pressure lantern in 1940.

As the lantern industry flourished, many Hong Kong lantern manufacturers were subcontracted to produce Western brand lanterns.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.11 Tourism in Hong Kong

Hong Kong, as the "Pearl of the Orient", earns much of her revenue from the tourism industry. Tourism has been actively promoted since 1958 by the Hong Kong Tourist Association. In the 1960s, the allure of Hong Kong was much enhanced by her portrayal in Western fiction and movies, for example "The World of Suzie Wong", and American serviceman frequented the territory on leave.

With its industrial boom, Hong Kong was also renowned for its abundant supply of cheap goods which made it in a shopping paradise. In the 1970s, the prosperity of the local tourism industry continued though the number of American serviceman visiting Hong Kong decreased.

From 1961 to 1980, the number of tourists in Hong Kong increased at an annual rate of 13.12% on average, and this brought about an invisible income of around 41 billion Hong Kong dollars.

The success of the tourism industry also encouraged the development of such tertiary industries as retailing, restaurants, entertainment and transport services.

Today, tourism remains a major earner of foreign exchange.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.10 Trade Fair

In order to promote the sale of local products, Hong Kong had a tradition of participating in trade fairs and exhibitions of industrial products. It was against this background that the territory staged its first industrial products exhibition in 1938 under the auspices of the Chinese Manufacturers' Association of Hong Kong.

Forty industrial enterprises took part and 200 types of products were placed on display. From then onwards, the Hong Kong Industrial Products Exhibition was held annually until 1974, apart from 1942-47.

These 31 annual events developed into the territory's extravaganzas, and the attendance record was set in 1968-69 when almost two million people visited the venue in Hung Hom.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.9 Barber Stall

Chinese men were no longer required to wear the queue after collapse of the Qing Dynasty. Later, as the Chinese were gradually liberated from traditional customs, hairdressing became fashionable among the more open-minded women.

When the technique of perming hair was introduced in Shanghai, the city's hairdressing trade flourished. After World War II, many Shanghainese barbers settled in Hong Kong and established Shanghainese-style barber shops.

Besides cutting hair, they offered shaving and even massage services. Apart from Shanghainese barber shops there were some ramshackle roadside stalls and travelling barbers patronised mostly by men and children.

To attract more consumers, these barbers provided comic books for free reading. This was most popular with children.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.8 Popular Culture - Radio Broadcasting

Radio broadcasting in Hong Kong started when Radio Hong Kong was established in 1928. Broadcasting services turned a new page in 1949 when Rediffusion (Hong Kong) Ltd. carried programmes to listeners' homes at a monthly fee of HK$10.

In 1957, Commercial Radio came on the scene just when mass-production of transistor radio was beginning. Before the advent of television, radio was the public's main source of entertainment.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.7 Grocery Store

A grocery shop is known as a "sze dor", the local pronunciation of the word "store".

In fact, a grocery store was a place selling a great variety of goods, most of them food products. While small compared with today's supermarkets, the grocery store stocked canned food, beverages, cigarettes, ice-cream and popsicles, biscuits, candies, toothpaste, matches, soap, exercise books, stationery and even toys.

They were well received by residents since they provided such a wide selection of goods, and most were located either close to residential areas or to main roads.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.6 Government Jingles

Not many families in Hong Kong could afford a television set in the late 1960s, and listening to the radio was the most popular and cheapest form of entertainment among the general public.

After the 1967 riots, the Hong Kong government was especially keen to enhance social cohesion, and it began broadcasting a public service announcement entitled "Hong Kong, My Home" on the radio as part of a civic education programme.

The government went on to produce a series of easy-to-remember promotional songs, including jingles for a road safety campaign (1968), Lap Sap Chung ("the litterbug", 1972), the Community Chest (1974), a family planning campaign (1975) and a clean beach campaign (1975).

These songs quickly established themselves in the collective consciousness and could be heard on everybody's lips at one time or another.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.5 Herbal Tea Shop

Besides quenching one's thirst, herbal tea releases body heat and has curative effects for minor illnesses. Decades ago, when the common people had few places to go for recreation, they liked to enjoy their leisure time at herbal tea shops with their friends, sipping herbal tea, reading newspapers or listening to dramas or music broadcasts on the radio.

Some of the big herbal tea shops even installed jukeboxes, and customers could choose their own songs by inserting a coin.

As few people could afford to buy a gramophone, this made the herbal tea shop more of an attraction to them. In the old days, herbal tea shops existed along Queen's Road West in Sai Ying Pun, Hollywood Road in Central, Queen's Road East in Wan Chai, and along Shanghai and Shantung Streets in Mong Kok.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.4 Water Rationing

Severe droughts in 1963 and 1967 reduced the territory's water supply to a perilous situation.

In 1963, the domestic water supply was rationed to four hours every four days. When a similar water crisis struck Hong Kong again in 1967, the Government negotiated with China for the provision of additional water supplies and built the Lok On Pai desalter to desalinate seawater.

Three reservoirs at Shek Pik, Plover Cove and High Island were built and a publicity campaign drove home the necessity to "save water".

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.3 Life in the Resettlement Estates

Living conditions in the early resettlement estates, built after the Shek Kip Mei fire, were quite primitive.

Families of seven or eight were jammed into a tiny cubicle of 11 square metres. Meals had to be cooked on a narrow balcony, and residents of each floor had to use communal washing and toilet facilities. Schools were hurriedly thrown up on the rooftops of seven-storey blocks almost as an afterthought, and nurseries, clinics and libraries were non-existent.

However, the low rent, a mere HK$14 per month, was the real blessing, and the former squatters could at least have a permanent roof over their heads.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.2 Squatter Settlements and the Shek Kip Mei Fire

The war left many homes destroyed or damaged, and new arrivals could only settle in squatter huts. By 1953, the estimated squatter population was 250,000 to 300,000. As the huts were built of highly inflammable material and such facilities as water supply were below standard, these settlements were extremely vulnerable to fire.

The first big conflagration hit the squatters of Tung Tau Tsuen in 1951. Far more devastating was the Shek Kip Mei fire in 1953. The Government quickly rushed to the assistance of the 59,000 fire victims, providing emergency rations and throwing up the temporary "Bowring Bungalows" which served as a prelude to the Government resettlement housing program.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.1 Immigration and Life of the Immigrants

By 1945, the territory's population had fallen to 600,000 as a result of the Japanese deportation program and voluntary migration of the Chinese to the Mainland.

With the return of peace in Hong Kong and the outbreak of Civil War in China, people began to flood into the territory at an unprecedented rate, and by April 1950 the population stood at 2.36 million.

Immigration controls were put into force in May, but the influx continued. Most of these immigrants, who came with their spouses, were either semi-skilled or unskilled, but some could only earn their living as labourers.

In 1946 the daily wage of a labourer was between $3.20 and $3.60, barely enough to match the abnormally high price of staple commodities. In the early 1950s, these unskilled immigrants earned a little more, but it was hardly sufficient to meet the inflationary living coasts.

Credit : History Museum of HK.

6.0 Postwar years

As Hong Kong began its slow recovery from the Japanese occupation, the government took its first step to rebuild the territory's political, social and economic structures. Measures to eliminate racial discrimination were initiated : senior government positions were opened to Chinese citizens - a locally recruited civil servant was promoted to the rank of department head for the first time in 1952 - and the prohibition that prevented Chinese people from living on the Peak and the southern part of Cheung Chau Island was also lifted.

Food rationing remained in force until 1955, while the acute housing shortage led to the introduction of a resettlement housing programme after 1953.

Rapid progress was made in education, with the number of pupils in schools leaping from 4,000 in 1945 to 418,546 in 1958, while a seven-year school expansion programme was launched in 1954 with the aim of providing places for all children of primary school age.

Credit : History Museum of HK.