Historic Hong Kong
History & Heritage
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Throughout its history, Hong Kong has been a place of ever-changing contours and skylines as well as home to a great variety of people. Here we present columns, photo galleries and stories about people who've lived in and helped shape Hong Kong, buildings preserved and long vanished, historical events, the city's changing culture and how the past shapes the present.
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Ubiquitous throughout Hong Kong on both public and private buildings, glazed ceramic tiles were popularised through their use to prolong the life of poorly constructed buildings.
Hong Kong has always been relatively short on historical relics but in Sung Wong Toi, a rare quiet spot in the hubbub of Kowloon City, one of our most ancient antiquities looks silently on.
By combining history, technology and entertainment, ‘time travel’ tourism could rejuvenate Hong Kong’s travel industry by attracting a range of visitors seeking unique and immersive experiences.
SCMP ColumnistLuisa Tam
When the global telecommunications industry underwent a revolution, reducing the time it took for messages to reach their recipients from months to minutes, Hong Kong was well placed to take advantage.
Few images are seen as being as quintessentially Hong Kong as the Chinese fishing boat, used in copious marketing campaigns to evoke a sense of the city, despite such vessels having sailed away decades ago.
Cantonese food is fresh, sweet and oily – and cooks’ choice of fats to give it the latter quality have evolved. Pork lard is still used, but peanut, rapeseed and palm oil have been added to the Hong Kong diet.
The Hong Kong Police did a superb job during the Mid-Autumn Festival Fire Dragon parade in Tai Hang, being helpful, efficient and with no one channelling their inner Darth Vader.
Once famous for its vibrant nightlife, Hong Kong has lost its mojo, and unimaginative attempts to revive it are only ‘doomed to fail’, as officials are apt to say these days.
Once wildly popular across the Chinese world, cheongsam have largely vanished into the pages of history – no thanks to Suzie Wong, and elite Hong Kong girls’ schools.
A century ago most of Hong Kong’s Chinese population was illiterate. The disappearance from the city’s streets of the professional letter writers they used is a reflection of its greatest societal achievement.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Cantonese furniture was the benchmark of Chinese craftsmanship for the outside world, and renewed domestic demand for high-quality items is seeing traditional skill sets revived.
Relics of the past, Victorian-era bandstands were often a joint effort of local government and philanthropists – as was the case in Hong Kong – and became a focal point for communal entertainment.
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