Hong Kong’s Jumbo Floating Restaurant, a famed but aging tourist attraction that featured in multiple Cantonese and Hollywood films, was towed out of the city Tuesday after years of revitalization efforts went nowhere.
The buoyant behemoth, which at 76 meters long could house 2,300 diners, set out shortly before noon from the southern Hong Kong Island typhoon shelter where it has sat for nearly half a century. Designed like a Chinese imperial palace and once considered a must-see landmark, the restaurant drew visitors from Queen Elizabeth II to Tom Cruise, and featured in several films — including Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, about a deadly global pandemic. The lavish restaurant’s operators cited the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason for finally closing its doors in March 2020, after around a decade of financial woes. Restaurant owner Melco International Development announced last month that ahead of its license expiration this month, Jumbo would leave Hong Kong and await a new operator at an undisclosed location.
Under overcast skies, a scattered group of onlookers gathered on the Aberdeen waterfront to see it be dragged away. Watching the restaurant’s ponderous progress across the shelter waters was Mr Wong, a 60-year-old man who said he had come specially to see its departure.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“The exterior was for many years a symbol of Hong Kong,” he said, adding he had eaten there once 20 years ago. “I believe it will come back and I look forward to it.”
Opened in 1976 by the late casino tycoon Stanley Ho (何鴻燊), the Jumbo Floating Restaurant embodied the height of luxury, reportedly costing over HK$30 million (US$3.8 million) to build. It featured a “dragon throne” in the style of the Ming dynasty as well as an opulent mural, according to the South China Morning Post.
The restaurant’s berth in Aberdeen harbor was traditionally a hotspot for seafood eateries — and fierce competition for customers only cooled when Jumbo’s operators acquired its biggest competitor, Tai Pak Floating Restaurant, in the 1980s.
The restaurant was kept afloat by Hong Kong’s booming tourism industry but its popularity had dimmed in recent years even before the coronavirus hit.
Restaurant operator Melco said last month the business had not been profitable since 2013 and cumulative losses had exceeded HK$100 million (US$12.7 million).
It was still costing millions in maintenance fees every year and around a dozen businesses and organizations had declined an invitation to take it over at no charge, Melco added. In her 2020 policy address, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) announced plans to turn the restaurant over to local theme park Ocean Park for revitalization, but the project fell through after the park said it could not find a suitable operator.
The ailing restaurant’s fate was sealed just days before Lam is set to leave office. In a sign of its dilapidation, on June 1, Jumbo’s kitchen boat listed into the water after a suspected hull breach, tilting almost 90 degrees. The derelict kitchen boat will be left behind, according to local media.
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and