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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Short Reads
The multi-storey car park in the H & S Building in Leighton Road, Causeway Bay, the first privately built one in Hong Kong and opened in 1967. Photo: Antony Dickson
Short Reads
When Hong Kong’s first privately built multi-storey car park opened
Hong Kong’s first privately built multistorey car park opened in Causeway Bay, with firecrackers, a cocktail party and a fashion show, in July 1967.
Shiu Ka-heng’s 3D virtual version of Hong Kong’s Jumbo Floating Restaurant is available on “The Lost Metropolis” website. Photo: The Lost Metropolis
Arts & Culture
Hong Kong’s Jumbo Floating Restaurant lives on – in virtual form
Artificial intelligence student Shiu Ka-heng has created a 3D virtual version of the once magnificent floating palace online that will never sink nor capsize.
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The Kwai Chung Container Terminal, part of Hong Kong’s international port built from the ashes of the second world war - a story told in a new Hong Kong Maritime Museum exhibition. Photo: Winson Wong
Arts & Culture
Rebuilt, reborn: how Hong Kong became a post-war hub of trade and industry
A new exhibition at Hong Kong Maritime Museum documents Hong Kong’s growth as an international port post-World War II, and showcases the extraordinary spirit of Hong Kong people.
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Tugboats begin the final journey of the Jumbo Floating Restaurant from Hong Kong’s Aberdeen Harbour to its ignominious grave at the bottom of the South China Sea. Photo: Dickson Lee
Food & Drink
Opinion|To mourn the sinking of Hong Kong’s floating restaurant – or not?
One Post Magazine columnist is in mourning for the passing of a cultural icon, but another argues the best place for the Jumbo Floating Restaurant that sank under tow is the bottom of the South China Sea.
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A painting of Sir Robert Ho Tung. May Holdsworth’s biography of Hong Kong’s one-time richest individual shines a light on his life.
Books
Who was the ‘Grand Old Man of Hong Kong’ and how did he make his fortune?
Most people in Hong Kong will have heard about Sir Robert Ho Tung, once the territory’s richest person – but how much do they know about the man? Biographer May Holdsworth has dug up some fascinating facts.
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The iconic Jumbo Floating Restaurant in Aberdeen could leave Hong Kong in weeks as its operator has warned that being closed for two years because of the pandemic has racked up large, unsustainable bills. Photo: Sam Tsang
Opinion
Opinion|Why the lack of interest in preserving Hong Kong’s contemporary history?
The departure of the Jumbo Floating Restaurant would be a sad continuation of the trend of post-World-War-II local history disappearing. This is about an outdated antiquities assessment process, preserving Hong Kong’s collective memory and establishing the future of tourism in the city.
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The Jumbo Floating Restaurant as seen on June 1. The fate of the historic restaurant is in doubt as calls for its preservation have run up against complaints about the economic cost and more pressing economic priorities elsewhere. Photo: Reuters
Opinion
Opinion|Jumbo Floating Restaurant has more value for Hong Kong than just profits
The debate over whether and how to aid the struggling restaurant involves asking what makes some buildings worth preserving and not others. Some carry cultural value beyond their economic output, which makes them worth saving as part of our collective history and heritage.
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Travel & Leisure
Goodbye to HK's Jumbo Floating Restaurant?
The new headquarters of the Standard Chartered Bank in Central opened in May 1990. Photo: SCMP
Short Reads
When Hong Kong’s new Standard Chartered Bank HQ building was built in 1990
The Standard Chartered Bank’s new building was built on the site of its old headquarters, and when it was finished it was taller than Hong Kong Bank’s new headquarters.
Catholic Bishop John Baptist Wu Cheng-chung was elevated to Cardinal in 1988. Photo: SCMP
Short Reads
When Pope John Paul II elevated Hong Kong’s Bishop Wu to Cardinal
In 1988, Pope John Paul II elevated Catholic Bishop John Baptist Wu Cheng-chung to Cardinal. The Hongkonger would ‘play an important role in the initiative to improve Sino-Vatican relations’.
HK EXHIBITION HEDDA MORRISON
[FEATURES] Photo / HEDDA MORRISON
Arts & Music
Photo essay|Photos of Hong Kong after World War II capture the city in its grimy glory
Arriving in 1946, Hedda Morrison may have spent only six months in Hong Kong, but the German photographer left behind a unique, wide-ranging photographic record.
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A Hong Kong icon of the 1970s, Lap Sap Chung, with its creator Arthur Hacker. Photo: SCMPost
Arts & Culture
Profile|The creator of Hong Kong’s beloved rubbish monster Lap Sap Chung
Lap Sap Chung was created by artist and author Arthur Hacker, who worked for the Government Information Services, and is featured in a retrospective exhibition.
Mark Isaac-Williams at an exhibition of his paintings at Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, where he worked on and off for decades after growing up in post-war Hong Kong. Photo: Jonathan Wong
Arts & Music
Profile|Painter of orchids on a colourful Hong Kong childhood at The Peninsula
Botanical artist Mark Isaac-Williams tells Kate Whitehead about living in The Peninsula hotel after the second world war and how he came to love painting and horticulture.
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Opinion
Then & Now|What is one’s ‘first language’ when several meld together in the mind?
One day I spent in a Portuguese household in Hong Kong where Cantonese, English and Macanese merged into one opened a window to a multilingual world that is fast disappearing.
Jason Wordie
Then & Now|Jumbo restaurant’s sad fate recalls that of the liner Queen Elizabeth
Converted from Cunard’s transatlantic luxury passenger ship the Queen Elizabeth, Seawise University was to become a floating tertiary institution in Hong Kong until it caught fire in 1972.
Jason Wordie
Then & Now|Where to retire? Portugal has long been seen a good option for Hongkongers
Portugal has maintained an allure for Far Eastern retirees since the 1940s with its low cost of living, sunny climate and echoes of long weekend sojourns in Macau.
Jason Wordie
Then & Now|‘Historical nihilists’ know that the truth ultimately seeps through
Official narratives that aim to wipe out collective memory have a way of unravelling, and it is the job of historians to preserve different versions of the past for future generations.
Jason Wordie
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Then & Now|Hong Kong has always had foreign residents who found the city incredibly boring
From Hong Kong’s mid-19th century urban beginnings, chronic boredom among long-term residents who felt trapped here was well-documented in diaries, letters and published memoirs.
Jason Wordie
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Then & Now|Back to the good old, bad old days as Filipinos elect another Marcos
‘Bongbong’ Marcos rode to power in the Philippines on a wave of nostalgia for his father Ferdinand Marcos’ kleptocratic rule. Might Hong Kong one day feel nostalgic for Carrie Lam’s time as chief executive?
Jason Wordie
Then & Now|Hong Kong’s sad history of suicide: jumping, drowning, poisoning
The means may have evolved along with the city but Hong Kong’s unforgiving climate has long seen individuals taking the ultimate step to end it all.
Jason Wordie
1
Then & Now|When Hong Kong started to change into a concrete jungle in the 1950s
Hong Kong was well positioned in the 1950s to make the most of the cement and floor-tile revolutions, both at home and as an export.
Jason Wordie
Then & Now|How Hong Kong’s Gurkha soldiers found love with Filipino domestic helpers
Stationed overseas for years, many Nepalese Gurkhas found love in the arms of Filipino domestic workers, seizing the rare opportunity to pick a companion of their own choosing.
Jason Wordie
Then & Now|How Hong Kong’s unattached British servicemen found love between the wars
British servicemen in Hong Kong often started relationships with bar girls or prostitutes, putting them up in subdivided flats in the city. A number of these relationships led to happy marriages.
Jason Wordie
Then & Now|Hong Kong offers eerie echoes of Calcutta’s retreat from global importance
Once a vibrant, cosmopolitan, world-class city second only to London in commercial importance, Calcutta (now Kolkata) provides a bleak template for the Hong Kong of tomorrow.
Jason Wordie
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Then & Now|Why ‘foreigners’ in Hong Kong should heed history’s lessons on deportation
Despite assurances, history shows ‘foreign’ residents are briskly discarded when their presence appears more nuisance than benefit – just look at Indonesia.
Jason Wordie
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