The clock says 7pm but it's hard to tell if it's night or day in many parts of the city. A combination of neon signs, dazzling store windows and floodlit billboards, each brighter than the next, mask the twilight hours. The night's so bright these days you almost have to wear shades.
But while they make for pretty travel posters, the overpowering batteries of lights also put a blight on the lives of many people such as Mary Wong Sai-yung. The Fa Yuen Street resident lives opposite the
Hoi King shopping arcade, where billboards are lit by five spotlights so powerful that even heavy curtains can't keep out the glare.
'I find it hard to sleep. My bedroom gets really stuffy since I can't open the windows,' says the 42-year-old nurse. 'The lights are on till 5am although there are few pedestrians on the street after midnight.'
In Causeway Bay, stockbroker Julie Fong Man-lai shares a similar problem. Floodlights at an optical store across from her building on Lee Garden Street bathe her bedroom in a constant glow at night. 'It really bothered me when I worked an early morning shift because I had to be in bed early and couldn't sleep,' she says. That's no longer a problem now that she's on a later shift, but Fong still thinks it's a waste of electricity.
Are such complaints the gripes of an overly demanding populace? An inspection of fixtures in Causeway Bay and Mong Kok with electronic engineer Henry Chung Shu-hung one evening reveals what people have to put up with.