JUST inside the entrance to Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park, there is a row of distorting mirrors. Once they've paid their way in - $10 for children, $15 for adults - the punters always stand in front of these mirrors and shriek at their quivering, comic-book reflections. Some of the park's attractions - the merry-go-round and bumper cars - also wobble in the glass behind them. The carousel looks squat and tired, as do the cars, but that isn't a trick of the curved image. That's the reality. Everything at Lai Chi Kok looks as if it's been trapped inside a joke mirror - as if Disneyland strolled up to look at itself, for a bit of a laugh, and what it saw was smaller and scruffier and seedier.
This is part of its charm. Twenty years ago, Lai Chi Kok still looked small and scruffy and seedy. Despite these failings, millions of people came to visit. The childhood memories of everyone who grew up in Hong Kong contains a drawer devoted to Lai Chi Kok. Therein resides a hodge-podge of peculiar items - candy-floss, an elephant called Tino, Wrigley's chewing-gum, ghost-trains, peacocks, shooting galleries, beehive hairstyles, waxworks, Anita Mui, popcorn and kung-fu shows.
Now these nostalgic moments are being relived for the last time because the set of Lai Chi Kok, after 48 years of lights and action (well, most of the time, the machinery was never entirely reliable) is closing down. The official date of closure was supposed to be tomorrow but there has been a stay of execution. The final decision on when the park will close is likely to be made this week. Such has been the desire of Hong Kong people to relive their youth - a desire which has been shamelessly worked upon by a television advertising campaign - the slogan of which is 'Don't miss the last chance to recapture your memories' - that the park's dwindling numbers have been miraculously boosted.
And so, since Lunar New Year, hordes of people of all ages have been pouring under the dusty, Gothic turrets which, with distinct oddness, denote the entrance. The Chiu family, which owns Lai Chi Kok, is naturally reluctant to curtail this sudden interest by most of Hong Kong to ride its rickety machines for one last time. The park will therefore stay open for a few more weeks. Then, no doubt about it, as the man who checks the tickets calls out in final warning to the passing crowds: 'There will be 30-storey buildings here soon!' Like many of the old amusement parks in the south of England and on the east coast of the United States, Lai Chi Kok once stood on a seafront. That was in 1949 when a man called Chung Pak-ying built a small complex next to Mei Foo beach. As the locals liked to stroll along the front, which was a popular courting destination, the little park naturally attracted a profitable overspill.
The population of Hong Kong was growing; there were many refugees who had arrived from China, lived in minute accommodation, had no form of entertainment and wanted to escape the recent past. In those days, Lai Chi Kok Amusement Park was part of a better future.
In 1963, Deacon Chiu acquired the place. Chiu had started his empire with a single cinema in Tsuen Wan and would later become chairman of ATV; his interests lay in providing entertainment and soon Lai Chi Kok had nine stages offering singing (Anita Mui was a young regular), dancing, comedy, magic and generally - though not always - wholesome family fodder. There were a few legal blips about 'indecent exhibitions' in the 1970s and as late as 1993, the Paladium (sic) Opera House was host to the European Red Hot Dance Troupe. Overheated punters had a chance to cool off, however, either in Southeast Asia's largest ice-skating rink which opened in 1972 or, more recently, in the park's Snow Garden which, for $60, offers real snow and temperatures as low as minus eight degrees Celsius.