South China Morning Post published this video item, entitled “Last traditional family letterpress printing shop in Hong Kong” – below is their description.
There were once more than 200 printing shops in Hong Kong’s Central and Sheung Wan areas alone. They flourished as international trading companies and grocery stores started to expand in the post-war period of the 1960s and 70s, prompting a need for the printing of receipts, invoices, namecards, envelopes and more.
Yam Wai-sang is the second-generation owner of Kwong Wah Printing Company in Sheung Wan. The 63-year-old witnessed the growth of the industry as well as its decline in the mid-1990s when faster, more-efficient digital printing gradually replaced the letterpress and offset printing. Yam now runs workshops to introduce traditional typography as an art form.
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In This Story: Hong Kong
Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR), is a metropolitan area and special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta of the South China Sea. With over 7.5 million residents of various nationalities in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world.
Hong Kong became a colony of the British Empire after the Qing Empire ceded Hong Kong Island at the end of the First Opium War in 1842. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. The whole territory was transferred to China in 1997. As a special administrative region, Hong Kong maintains separate governing and economic systems from that of mainland China under the principle of “one country, two systems”.