How a gangly Scotsman nicknamed Jock the Sock ended up as Hong Kong's longest-serving governor – and one who laid the groundwork for many of the city's most important institutions....
A middle-class apartment block, a centre of nightlife, a seedy flophouse, a centre of global trade and a haven for asylum-seekers: the many lives of Hong Kong's Chungking Mansions. ...
There’s a lot of pressure on Hong Kong Park. It shoulders the responsibility of representing the whole of Hong Kong, but it has become such a familiar landmark, it almost disappears into the landscape. It also has the challenge of distinguishing itself from its neighbour, the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens, with which it is often confused. […]...
These days, the Western District has become synonymous with whatever is gentrified and hip. And while stylish new coffee joints may be mushrooming between mechanic shops and fruit stalls, some remnants of the district’s glorious past as the centre of entrepôt trade still exist. Wholesale shops still line Connaught Road and Des Voeux Road, selling dried seafood, rice and […]...
Hong Kong’s housing estates planted the seed for its verticality: nearly half the population lives in these high-rise neighbourhoods. But how did they come to be?...
The changes started years ago, but it was only when the giant cow disappeared that it became clear what was happening. In 2015, the bovine emblem of Queen’s Road West restaurant Sammy’s Kitchen was removed, an iconic piece of neon scrubbed from the street it had dominated for 40 years. The cow was taken away […]...
Everything new becomes old – and everything old becomes new again. When the Murray Building was completed in 1969, it was part of the modernist revolution that had swept away the aesthetic excesses of the past. It was bold and rational, a fresh-faced counterpoint to the fusty Victorian structures that littered the slopes of the Peak. […]...
