For Hong Kong’s famed neon lights, the future looks dim.
Neon-lit signs were once ubiquitous, illuminating the streets with their soft, warm glow and giving the dynamic Asian territory a signature look to match its post-World War II economic boom.
Tens of thousands of signs on countless tower blocks advertise restaurants, nightclubs, saunas, camera shops and jewelry boutiques in a rainbow of garish hues. Many are cantilevered far out over the street, competing for people’s attention.
Photo: AP
Few symbols have come to represent Hong Kong as much as its skyline of flashing and blinking neon billboards. That visual heritage is now under threat.
Over the past two decades, Hong Kong’s neon industry has been gradually dying out, a victim of changing tastes, new technologies and tighter regulations. Some groups have been fighting to save the neon signs as part of the territory’s cultural heritage before they disappear completely.
“Neon signs are not just something that illuminate,” said Cardin Chan of Hong Kong Neon Heritage, whose members are cataloging the signs that remain and working on creative ways to preserve them. “They should be considered as art and it is very unique to Hong Kong.”
Wu Chi-kai is one of about half a dozen neon sign masters left in Hong Kong.
The 50-year-old said he now earns about one-third of what he made during the “golden era for the neon sign industry” in the 1980s and early 1990s.
At the time, Hong Kong was at its economic peak.
Wu had done a six-month apprenticeship in his teens before being hired by a signmaker.
Their days were so busy that he sometimes slept in the studio, he said.
“Around 1997, LEDs came out,” Wu said. “I thought that it would be a strong enemy of neon signs. As neon signs had been used for decades, people perceived it as old-fashioned and people usually love to use something new for their store signs.”
LED signs have since proliferated across Hong Kong because they are brighter and more energy efficient, but purists say they also lack neon’s warm tones.
Neon’s appeal also faded because of its association with red-light districts, a turn-off for businesses wanting a wholesome image.
Hong Kong government regulations have also sped neon’s demise.
Decades ago, few regulations governed sign placement and size, Wu said.
Businesses tried to do outdo each other by putting up bigger and bigger signs, held up by cables and jutting out over busy thoroughfares such as the Nathan Road tourist strip in Kowloon’s Tsim Sha Tsui district. At night, they appear to float in the sky.
“When our clients wanted their neon signs to catch the attention of passersby, they would make the signs wider to avoid being blocked by the other ones,” Wu said.
The Hong Kong Department of Buildings has been cracking down and ordering that some signs be removed.
It does not tally how many neon signs Hong Kong has, although it says the territory has about 120,000 signboards, many of which are believed to be unauthorized.
In each of the past two years, the department has removed or repaired about 2,700 dangerous or unauthorized signboards and issued removal orders for about 700 more.
Among those caught up in the clampdown was a sign depicting a giant Angus cow that had long been a local landmark, hanging above the entrance to the restaurant Sammy’s Kitchen since 1977.
The owners donated it to M+, Hong Kong’s museum of visual culture, which is now adding neon signs to its permanent collection and had dedicated an exhibition to neon signs in 2014.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion