COLLECTION NAME:
Leroy H. Miller Collection
Record
Collection Name:
Leroy H. Miller collection
Title:
Arriving at Hong Kong and to Canton
Name:
[The Bray Studios]
Resource Type:
Moving image
Genre:
silent films
Genre:
travelog (performed works genre)
Genre:
Amateur films
Date Issued:
1936/1939
Language Term:
English
Extent:
1 film reel (20 min., 58 sec.)
Form:
16mm (photographic film size)
Form:
black-and-white film (film, material)
Abstract:
Travel footage with decorative intertitles. Title on screen reads "The next country to be visited is China, The Rip Van Winkle Among the Nations." Views include boats in a harbor, with people nearby walking, cooking, and carrying water; and street scenes in Hong Kong with more people walking.
Note Type:
Segment sequence
Note:
As original, historical material, some of the language used and opinions shared in these films - especially regarding topics of race, gender, class religion, and ability - do not reflect the current preferred terminology of individuals of marginalized identities, or the values and norms of the CU Boulder Archives.
Note:
00:00:03 The next country to be visited is China "The Rip Van Winkle Among the Nations". 00:00:23 The great ocean liner on which you are a passenger, is groping its way between ghostly junks and vague hulks of strange looking ships into the blinding fog of Hongkong Harbor. 00:01:20 You have just heard that Hongkong is an island and not a city; that it is the most cosmopolitan community in the whole world; and the naughtiest; and this is your first thrilling glimpse of it! 00:02:00 As elusive as Salome in her seven veils, she hides behind the mist, calling you with faint, suddenly extinguished cries. 00:03:08 And then the fog lifts and you go shorewards in the ship's tender, weaving your way between craft rigged after the manner of your childhood's dreams. 00:03:45 You glide past the huge freight pier with its hustling coolies and compradores bobbing about on their unintelligible errands. 00:04:17 And at least you slide toward the age-old Sampan Dock, worn by the scuffling feet of sailors and civilians from a hundred foreign lands. 00:05:01 On your right are go-downs and street markets reeking with the smell of tea and cooking oil, incense and fish. 00:05:40 The unforgettable, unforgivable SMELL of that waterfront drives you headlong into a rickshaw and off the Bund. 00:06:35 A night's journey on a sort of pirate ship sailing northward from Hongkong, lands you are Canton's gate in the Pearl River at dawn. 00:06:49 Canton, on the Pearl River about 90 miles inland. 00:08:41 At once you precipitated into a pandemonium of cries and curses, clanging bells, barking dogs, clucking geese, and colliding Slipper-boats. 00:09:31 All about you are rafts, sampans, junks and house-boats, moving along with the ludicrous dignity of a company of village geese. 00:10:16 Within these crude vessels live the "Tan-min,"---half a million outcasts, whose only home is here upon the slimy waters of The Pearl. 00:11:12 With them are the domestic dogs, a few fowls, a litter of faggots, rice bowls, old relatives, and other impedimenta of a home. 00:11:54 The wife has a real nautical air about her as she performs, somehow all at once, the duties of helmsman, cook, nursemaid and housekeeper. 00:12:31 Some of the sampans are floating restaurants and some take in boarders; while on others, the lighter vices flourish exceedingly to the sound of vile music on a one-string violin. 00:13:40 Some of the junks carry cannon to safeguard them against pirates, -- though it is hard to say whether the gunner or the object fired at would suffer most from the firing. 00:14:23 All these canals are crammed with domestic craft --- 00:14:42 A quarter of a million Cantonese live and die in floating homes --- 00:15:12 The "Water-people" are looked down upon by the "Land-people" --- 00:15:22 The vastest floating suburb is moored along the river-front --- 00:16:07 Many of these tiny homes are astonishingly neat and pretty --- 00:16:29 "Rock-a-back baby"! --- 00:16:55 Treated like a member of the family --- 00:17:16 Other members --- 00:17:26 An ancient member --- 00:17:35 Police! --- 00:17:45 The famous "Flower Boats" are festive "Sing-Song" restaurants --- 00:18:04 Many a modern Chinese "steamer" is propelled by manpower - toiling like the galley slaves of antiquity --- 00:18:25 From these scenes of indescribable confusion you turn dizzily to go ashore in the wake of your Chinese fellow passengers. 00:18:58 A moment later and you are bobbing along in a Sedan Chair across the Strand, and through the Peace Gate into the Walled City of Canton. 00:19:35 Once well within the walls you find yourself confronted by a maze of narrow lanes, in one of the which you are deposited. 00:20:08 The overlapping roofs above the narrow streets, shut out the day; and in the resultant twilight, the restless people swarm like vague shapes in an evil dream. 00:20:58 End of recording.
Subject Topic:
Junks
Subject Topic:
Ships
Subject Topic:
Harbors
Subject Topic:
Sailors
Subject Topic:
Markets
Subject Topic:
Rickshaws
Subject Topic:
Families
Subject Topic:
Sampans
Subject Topic:
River steamers
Subject Geographic:
Hong Kong (semi-independent political entity)
Subject Geographic:
China--Guangzhou
Subject Geographic:
China--Pearl River
Identifier:
U183051010838_narv_millerLeroy_6-4_arrivingHongKongCanton_a.mp4
Internet Media Type:
video/mp4
Digital Origin:
reformatted digital
Access Condition:
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