書史 - Histsyngraphy

Research article The Week the Railway Opened The Kowloon-Canton Railway, 1910–1911 Histsyn · Independent research Compiled 10 October 2026 · Endnotes and bibliography after The Chicago Manual of Style , 17th ed. Abstract A railway’s opening is imagined as a ceremony, and remembered as a certificate. The record of the Kowloon-Canton Railway keeps both, on the same day. On 1 October 1910 the British Section was opened twice: legally, by the Chief Resident Engineer’s certification under Section 16 of the Railways Ordinance, 1909 (“the works and rolling stock are in a sound condition… without danger to the public using it… opened… on the 1st instant”), and publicly, by an afternoon ceremony at Kowloon at which the Officer Administering the Government declared “the British Section of the Canton-Kowloon Railway open for traffic” with the Viceroy of Canton’s representa...

  Research article The Subscription City The first City Hall of Hong Kong, 1861–1937: a joint-stock cultural institution — founded by circular, inaugurated by a prince, demolished for a bank Histsyn · Independent research Compiled 9 October 2026 · Endnotes and bibliography after The Chicago Manual of Style , 17th ed. Abstract Hong Kong’s first City Hall was not a government building. It was a joint-stock company — “the property of certain shareholders” — erected on land the Government granted free, capitalised through shares and scrip certificates exchanged at the Oriental Bank’s counter, and bound by its funding terms to keep its Library and Museum “open gratuitously to the Public”. This paper follows the institution across its whole recorded life: the Provisional Committee’s founding circular of 31 December 1863 and the opposition it drew; the design competition of 1865 with its five-hundred-spectator theatre brief; the foundation stone laid in February 1867 by Governor MacDonnel...