The Early Years
Initially, all conveyance was on foot, but it was not long before Chinese businessmen had established fleets of sedan chairs and palanquins. In 1874, rickshaws were introduced from Japan. One hired chairs and rickshaws in much the same way cabs are hired in modern times. Here in the 1930s parishioners dressed in their Sunday-best are carried up Battery Path to Sunday service at St John's Cathedral.
Even at the end of the 19th century, it was not uncommon to see carts pulled through the streets of urban Hong Kong by bullocks when farmers brought their produce to market.
St John's Cathedral as seen from Garden Road in the 1940s. A bastion of the Anglican faith in an infant colony that rapidly became the target of missionaries seeking converts to rival religions, St John's Cathedral took an early and stalwart position of high ground at the core of the expanding community.