A Pop-Culture Mecca
Presented at Mark Twain Elementary School’s First International Festival,
May 11, 2002 · Houston, Texas
Hong Kong, 2004
Photos courtesy of Dora Man and Paul Yim, from their July 2004 trip to Hong Kong.
Hong Kong has been a busy center of commercial and cultural exchange between East and West since 1842, when it became a British colony. Before 1984, it played an important role in Western trade with communist China and attracted considerable attention from abroad. Visitors came to explore this exotic place, write novels, songs, and poems about Hong Kong, and make movies there.
Inspired by an article by Amy Wu in Time in 1997, I gathered the following productions, which offer an interesting view of Hong Kong in international popular culture.
Hong Kong in Books, Film, and Music
Hong Kong Through the Camera
At the Movie Museum in Tsim Sha Tsui East, Kowloon Peninsula, exhibits of Hong Kong films from the 1950s and 1960s reflected the cultural values of their time and preserved an important chapter of Hong Kong history.
Film clips reveal the everyday lives of local Hong Kong people, many of whom were refugees from mainland China during the 1950s and 1960s.
Ngong Ping
On the Ngong Ping plateau, within walking distance of the Lantau Tea Gardens, Po Lin Monastery is home to the giant Tian Tan Buddha and other magnificent Buddha statues. Vegetarian meals and chilled, soft silken tofu pudding are available nearby.
Scenes from Hong Kong Island
These scenes capture some of the places that have long attracted filmmakers: stores selling dried seafood and herbal products, old steep streets lined with stairs, and trams making their way through Central.
With thanks to Tony Man for these Hong Kong photographs.