Last year, the famed Lo Shut Company - the last shop in the city making and selling imitation jewellery - closed after serving the public for 84 years, due to rising rents in Yau Ma Tei.
Other casualties consigned to history include the four-decade-old Cheung Lee Restaurant in Tin Hau, which also closed its doors last year.
Both the 80-year-old Wing Wo Grocery and the 60-year-old Lung Moon Restaurant shut up shop in 2009. Opened in 1963, the Silver Theatre in Kwun Tong closed in 2009.
However, the traditional businesses with cultural value that were hardest hit were the Chinese emporiums, whose numbers plummeted from more than 300 in the 1970s to just eight today.
A few are surviving, but only after revamping their business models and by specialising in the sale of handicrafts or traditional Chinese medicine and herbal products, and re-branding their products.