Hong Kong was once world famous for its neon-light shop signs but many old masters took their secrets to the grave — now a generation of tech-savvy, globally connected young artists are trying to keep the trade alive.
Karen Chan describes herself as a “neon nomad.” Better known by her professional artistic name Chankalun, she had long been fascinated by the kaleidoscopic neon lights that bathed Hong Kong streets in a warm glow. But finding someone who might teach her was far from easy.
The trade has long been dominated by masters — si fu in Cantonese — who guarded their knowledge even as neon gave way to cheaper, more efficient LED lights and city officials began clamping down on unsafe hoardings.
Photo: AFP
“The si fu will not pass on all the knowledge, especially if there are no guidelines or manuals, they will only pass on their skills to their own descendants,” Chan said.
Few family members wanted to take up a skill that was becoming redundant so many masters died without passing on their knowledge.
“If you have very valuable skill or knowledge, you should be spreading it around so that it could live as well,” the 33-year-old artist lamented. “Overprotection can be a cause for a lot of crafts to die.”
Photo: AFP
SECRET TRADE
Undeterred, Chan turned to the Internet and traveled to places such as Amsterdam and New York to learn from artists there.
There she discovered a global community of neon fans and professionals willing to trade tips.
“There is an open sourcing culture appearing in the new generation of artists,” she said. “Everyone is posting their experiments or their new finds on Instagram or Facebook, and everyone is very happy to share ... this kind of knowledge,” she explained.
“The old generations see it as a secret trade.”
Chan, the only Hong Kong woman currently working within a traditionally male-dominated trade, operates out of a studio run by Jive Lau, a 38-year-old artist who also represents the new breed of younger neon light benders.
Together they work glass to near melting point, bending and blowing the tubes into remarkable shapes over blue flame burners that can reach 1,000 degrees Celsius.
Lau was introduced to neon bending in Taiwan, where he said masters were more willing to share their knowledge with strangers.
But he too has found the Internet a huge help.
“I keep learning from online resources and from watching videos,” he explained.
Today, he offers workshops to a growing number of neon enthusiasts.
“The education can actually help ... (in) promoting the neon culture, keeping it alive,” he said.
MODERN YET LOCAL VIBE
Chan’s current project is called “The Neon Girl” and involves her working with half a dozen neon light masters around the world to create six distinctive pieces.
They are a far cry from the huge flashing signs that used to protrude horizontally from the sides of Hong Kong buildings, advertising everything from restaurants to mahjong parlors.
Instead they have a modern, but still local vibe.
“For neon to live... it needs some other elements to inject into it, and this is what I’m doing as a new generation of neon artist,” she explained.
She hopes the pieces will “break the boundaries or the perspective of how the people think of neon, that it can be expanded so that it can really live on a new form.”
She compares neon glass bending to an Olympic sport that requires strength, precision, and flexibility.
And her stubborn perseverance has paid off in that she eventually found a si fu — known as Master Wong — willing to take her on.
“Because I fell in love with this medium, I tried to do it myself, so I begged Master Wong and other neon benders in Hong Kong but they refused teaching me,” she recalled.
In 2018, she then decided to learn on her own and enlisted the help of a glass sculptor who watched the neon creation process on YouTube to explain the technique to her.
After creating an art piece in a week, she returned.
Master Wong, who is now 80 years-old and eschews publicity, was impressed with her work and agreed to take her on as an apprentice.
“I think the neon masters in Hong Kong will never accept me as a real neon master,” she said, “but maybe as a neon artist, which is fine with me.”
The last couple of weeks I have been traveling across the island of Panay in the Philippines, visiting my wife’s family. Inevitably, I have spent a lot of time on the trip comparing the Philippines to Taiwan and contemplating the rich, ancient connections between them. I could wax eloquent on politics or history, but today I’m going to talk about that most lowly of food items, the humble green. That’s what I miss the most whenever I leave Taiwan, and of all the nations around Taiwan, the Philippines presents the sharpest contrast on this topic. Our benighted, myopic tourism bureau may
The cool, clean river water quickly evaporates as I warm myself in the tropical sun, still strong at midday even in November. Below me is a bend in the river, and a deep emerald pool has formed here alongside the concrete platform I am sitting on, which once served as a check dam, but today serves as the perfect place to launch myself into the water. On shore, children splash in the water as parents sit nearby under awnings. Above me, a hawk traces out lazy circles against the bright blue sky. In the distance, a train emerges from a
Feb. 6 to Feb. 12 The plan was to break out of jail, seize the facility’s ammunition, release the inmates and broadcast their “declaration of Taiwanese independence” to the world at the nearby Broadcasting Corporation of China station. Chiang Ping-hsing (江炳興) and his fellow political prisoners at Taiyuan Prison (泰源監獄) hoped that this action would attract international attention and spark a nationwide rebellion that would overthrow Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) authoritarian regime. It was originally planned for Feb. 1, 1970, but due to various setbacks they weren’t able to strike until the noontime guard change at the prison on Feb. 8. They attacked the
Milf Manor is the house that Freud built. Eight women aged between 40 and 60 arrived at this beachside villa in Mexico to film a dating show, somehow missing the twist: the lineup of young men they’d be in the villa with would include… their sons. The show premiered in the US last week, and I have screamed hoarsely through every video I can find, shouting, “I HATE IT I HATE IT OK ONE MORE CLIP I HATE IT!” into my arm. You know how Big Brother and its fellow reality shows used to claim they were sociological experiments in order
RSS