SCENES IN HONG KONG AND THE NEW TERRITORIES [Allocated Title]

Silent 8mm black and white and colour footage shot in 1939 by Lieutenant-Commander George C Blundell showing Hong Kong's New Territories and floating communities on Hong Kong island.

START 00:00:00 Monochrome scenes in the New Territories near the border with China featuring terraced paddy fields in the valleys between the ranges of hills. Views of the walled and moated village of Kam Tin, a narrow alley inside the village and some of its inhabitants.

00:03:19 Peasants wearing broad-rimmed straw hats and in traditional working clothes carry baskets of rice yoked across their backs. A fishing net is raised from a pond. Peasants of both sexes carry heavy loads of straw and firewood into their village. A new peasant dwelling awaits completion (?).

00:04:05 On board the heavy cruiser HMS Kent at HMS Tamar, Hong Kong, Admiral Sir Percy Noble formally welcomes Major-General A E Grassett, General Officer Commanding British Troops in China, and his ADC. Visible in the background alongside the quay are three submarines and a destroyer behind them.

00:04:13 The new 400 feet-wide, 200 feet-deep Shing Mun River dam filmed in June 1939, very shortly after its completion.

00:05:19 Two men, identified by Blundell as Gibbs (P.M.O.) and Nic Williams (F.R.M.O.), step on boulders to cross a stream (the Shing Mun River). A view of a waterfall. A view of steel cantilever road bridge on the border at Lo Wu (?) between the British-owned New Territories and Japanese-occupied China, with a Union Jack on one side of the Shenzen River and an Imperial Japanese flag flying from a border post on the other. A group of Japanese soldiers stare at the camera from their side of the frontier.

00:06:01 Scenes filmed in November 1939 in the New Territories: ducks waddling about, feeding in a flooded paddy field, being herded by a Chinese peasant farmer, labourers carrying heavy baskets of soil yoked across their backs and dumping their loads on the side of a railway embankment. A peasant farmer watering the soil with two big tubs of water yoked across his back. Adults and children in the fields gathering in the rice harvest, giving the rice crop a preliminary threshing in large baskets with screens around their tops to prevent rice husks escaping and carrying the rice home in large baskets yoked across their backs. Water buffalo used to draw a wooden plough across a paddy field. A young woman wearing a broad-rimmed straw hat with a fringe to keep flies off carries two large baskets of rice on her own. A European man watches as Chinese labourers use a mechanical thresher on the rice and fill up baskets with the crop. A row of six large funeral urns containing the bodies of the dead sealed in quicklime.

00:14:36 Colour scenes filmed in October 1939 at Aberdeen Harbour on Hong Kong island and the surrounding waters showing Chinese fishing boats and junks under sail and fishing nets drying on poles. A mass of junks and sampans that are floating homes to entire families in the sea off Aberdeen and along its waterfront. Fishing boats with booms spread out on either side to carry the nets and junks in full sail.

00:19:36 On board HMS Kent at dawn for the flag raising ceremony on the quarterdeck, showing the ship's Royal Marine band playing the National Anthem, two officers saluting the Colours and the White Ensign flying from the ensign staff at the stern.

END 00:20:00

8mm