In the eye of the storm: Typhoons in Hong Kong

August 13, 2014 10:04 PM

South China Morning Post interactive graphic detailing the effect typhoons have had on Hong Kong since settlement.

‘When the typhoon was at its height a Chinese was blown down Pedder Street toward the wharf, and unable to stop went headlong into the harbour… A European rushed across the windswept space and boldly jumped in to the rescue. He succeeded in securing the drowning man with the aid of an Indian constable who unrolled his turban and threw the end to the rescuer.’

posted by awfurby (3 comments total)

The infrastructure used to keep the streets from flooding is very impressive, but let's not forget about the other important contribution that typhoons have made to HK culture, typhoon shelter crab.
posted by C^3 at 12:10 AM on August 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Fantastic story, awfurby - I still haven't finished it, because it's just so big but it's very absorbing so far and I love the way they've brought together different types of reporting and narrative into one piece as web journalism.
posted by viggorlijah at 6:34 AM on August 14, 2014

Yes, this is really fantastic so thank you for linking it! It's also quite interesting to see how the news reporting has changed (look, for example at the 1906 paper which emphasized news in quantity, versus the 1937 paper where there's a huge ad that's bigger than the main headline! The 1962 paper is the one that looks like what I 'expect' from a major paper the day after a disaster, but so interesting to see that those expectations were not in place throughout the history).
posted by librarylis at 7:10 PM on August 14, 2014