One of the few remaining works of graffiti by the late 'King of Kowloon' - art the government had pledged to preserve - was recently covered by neatly applied grey paint.
The Highways Department, which was responsible for maintenance of a retaining wall in Kwun Tong, admitted that it painted over four other graffiti works on the wall during recent routine maintenance, but denied the department applied the paint covering Tsang Tsou-choi's iconic street calligraphy.
All the new paint appeared to be the same colour and was applied with similar strokes. The graffiti was painted on a retaining wall in Lei Yue Mun Road, opposite the Kwun Tong police station.
Artist Joel Chung Yin-chai, who was a friend of Tsang, said the government painted over the graffiti a few years ago but the paint had worn away, revealing the calligraphy.
Chung said that the work was still intact in July, albeit a little blurry. But when Chung went back last month, Tsang's graffiti, together with other graffiti on the wall, had been covered with grey paint.
'There's nothing that can be done now,' Chung said. 'We can only wait for this new layer of paint to erode so that Tsang's work can be seen again. The kind of paint that Tsang used, in fact, lasts longer than that used by the Highways Department.'