Landmark sights in Hong Kong
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A
South Lantau Rd
Just under 5km southwest of Mui Wo, Pui O is the first of several coastal villages along South Lantau Rd. Pui O has a decent beach, but as it’s the closest one to Mui Wo it can get very crowded. The village has several restaurants, holiday flats galore and, in season, stalls renting bicycles. Cheung Sha (Long Sand), at over 3km Hong Kong’s longest beach, is divided into ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ sections; a trail over a hillock links the two. Upper Cheung Sha, with occasional good surf, is the prettier and longer stretch and boasts a modern complex with changing rooms, toilets, showers and a snack bar. Lower Cheung Sha villagehas a beachfront restaurant, Stoep Resta…
reviewed
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B
Noonday Gun
Noel Coward made the so-called Noonday Gun famous with his satirical song ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’ (1924), about colonials who braved the fierce heat of the midday sun while the local people sensibly remained indoors: ‘In Hong Kong/they strike a gong/And fire off a noonday gun/To reprimand each inmate/Who’s in late.’ Apparently when Coward was invited to pull the lanyard, he was late and it didn’t go off until 12.03pm. Built in 1901 by Hotchkiss of Portsmouth, this recoil-mounted 3lb cannon is one of the few vestiges of the colonial past in Causeway Bay and is its best-known landmark. The original six-pounder was lost during WWII; its replacement was deemed too noisy and…
reviewed
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Public Viewing Gallery at Bank of China Tower
The Bank of China (BOC) is headquartered in the awesome Bank of China Tower to the southeast of its old home (the Old Bank of China building at 1 Bank St). The tower was designed by Chinese-born American architect IM Pei and completed in 1990. This 70-storey building is Hong Kong’s third-tallest structure after Two International Finance Centre in Central and Central Plaza in Wan Chai. The asymmetry of the building is puzzling at first glance, but it’s really a simple geometric exercise. Rising from the ground like a cube, it is successively reduced, quarter by quarter, until the south-facing side is left to rise upward on its own. Many local Hong Kong Chinese see the buil…
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C
Nathan Road
Kowloon’s ‘Golden Mile’ may sound romantic, but in truth its main thoroughfare (named after former Sir Matthew Nathan) is a bit of a traffic- and pedestrian-choked scrum of electronics shops and tenement blocks. It is nonetheless an iconic Hong Kong scene stacked with seedy guesthouses awkwardly rubbing shoulders with top-end hotels, touts selling ‘copy’ watches and tailors plying their trade on street corners. If that makes it sound edgy, in reality it is completely safe – which is just as well since you won’t be able to avoid criss-crossing it if you spend any time in the area. Anyone who chooses to stay at Chungking Mansions, Mirador Mansion or Golden Crown Guest House…
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D
Lover’s Rock
A kilometre or so northeast of the Police Museum is what the Chinese call Yan Yuen Sek, a phallus-shaped boulder on a bluff at the end of a track above Bowen Rd. This is a favourite pilgrimage site for childless women and those who think their lovers, husbands or sons could use the help of prayer and a joss stick or two. It’s especially busy during the Maidens’ Festival, held on the seventh day of the seventh moon (mid-August). The easiest way to reach here is to take green minibus 24A from the Admiralty bus station. Get off at the terminus (Shiu Fai Tce) and walk up the path behind the housing complex.
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E
Possession St
A short distance west of Cat St, next to Hollywood Road Park and before Hollywood Rd meets Queen’s Rd West, is Possession St. This is thought to be where Commodore Gordon Bremmer and a contingent of British marines planted the Union flag on 26 January 1841 and claimed Hong Kong Island for the Crown (though no plaque marks the spot). Queen’s Rd runs in such a serpentine fashion as it heads eastward because it once formed the shoreline of Hong Kong Island’s northern coast, and this part of it was called Possession Point.
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Old Bank of China (BOC) Building
To the east of the HSBC building is the old Bank of China (BOC) building, built in 1950, which now houses the bank’s Central branch and, on the top three (13th to 15th) floors, the exclusive China Club, which evokes the atmosphere of old Shanghai. The BOC is now headquartered in the awesome Bank of China Tower (1 Garden Rd) to the southeast, designed by Chinese-born American architect IM Pei and completed in 1990.
reviewed
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F
Former KCR Clock Tower
Immediately east of Star Ferry pier, this 44m-high clock tower (1915) was once part of the southern terminus of the Kowloon-Canton Railway (KCR). Operations moved to the modern train station at Hung Hom to the northeast in late 1975. The station was demolished in 1978, though you can see a scale model of what it looked like at the Hong Kong Railway Museum in Tai Po in the New Territories.
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