I have been wanting to answer your post about your time in Hong Kong, I too was there several times in the early 1950´s. Of course it was not like it is today the Bank of China was the biggest building then. I always remember the sampan girls who got contracts to service the ships. They would do cleaning and painting for the privilege of removing all the garbage. The Mama sans would produce carefully preserved recommendations of theirs and their grandmothers and great grandmothers from previous ship’s captains going back to the days of sailing ships.
The girls were very pretty and the crew treated them better than their sisters. Absolutely no hanky panky they could not be safer even if they were in a convent. At meal times they would fill their pails with the left over food and of course lots of other things that the sailors gave them. They have been a tradition in the Royal navy ever since the British leased Hong Kong.
They lived on the sampans and depending on the size there were half a dozen to a dozen girls on each sampan.
The side painters in their sampans were still there in '59.
Were the Tiger Baum (may be one word) Gardens there when you were there?
I just checked and the Tiger Balm Gardens were opened to the public in the early 1950s so I guess they were there when you were there. Apparently they are still there and open. OpryLand in Nashville closed but Tiger Balm Gardens is still going strong.