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Jason Wordie at work, his pet parrot watching on, as he looks back over 25 years of covering the history and culture of Hong Kong. Photo: courtesy of Jason Wordie

Then & Now | Columnist Jason Wordie on 25 years of writing for the Post

No, he isn’t told what to write about, says Wordie, in answer to the most common question he gets, as he looks back on a quarter century documenting the region’s huge changes

No, he isn’t told what to write about, says the long-standing SCMP columnist as he looks back on a quarter century documenting the region’s huge changes – from Macao to Macau, and Pearl River Delta to Greater Bay Area

Hong Kong’s ‘toy street’ loses some of its shine as 30-year-old shop closes

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Then & Now | How ‘Shanghai’ came to mean quality, full-service bathhouses and first-rate pedicures

Then & Now | Taxi dancers to dancing aunties: the history of Hong Kong’s paid partner scene

How Hong Kong’s shadowy triad-dominated underworld of paid female companions has evolved over the decades

Taxi dancers were a feature of nightlife through much of the 20th-century, in Shanghai and other Chinese cities, as well as in HK. Photo: Getty Images

Hong Kong nostalgia inspires Canadian’s food and fashion art

Canadian artist Kitty Wong recalls eating at Hong Kong cafes and reading the fashion comic Miss 13 Dots as a child. It inspires her art, some of which is on show in her exhibition Hong Kong Baby Girl.

Then & Now | When Sikh doormen welcomed visitors to Hong Kong’s banks, hotels and homes

Once upon a time, liveried guards were stationed at most high-end establishments and affluent homes around Hong Kong – now, they’re a rare throwback to a bygone era

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The great escape: when 3 prisoners broke out of a Hong Kong jail

After 2 months of planning their escape from Chi Ma Wan open prison, the prisoners were recaptured within a couple of days

In August 1970, three escaped foreign prisoners were recaptured after just two days on the lam. Photo: SCMP Archive

How a triple murder in 1958 led to the attacker’s hanging in Hong Kong

Three men were chopped to death while sleeping in the street, but their assailant was caught within days and hung for the crime later in the year

On this day | A visual tour of Hong Kong’s iconic ‘ding ding’ trams through the decades

On the 120th anniversary of the day Hong Kong Tramways began operation, we take a look at the iconic vehicles that trundle through the city’s streets.

How Hong Kong fell in love with pineapple buns and egg tarts

Hong Kong people love their baked goods, from egg tarts to pineapple buns and cocktail buns. We ask the president of the Hong Kong Bakery and Confectionery Association, Louisa Ho, about their origins.

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Chef Lam Kin-ming making pineapple buns at Lucky Star bakery in Hong Kong. Photo: Llewellyn Cheung

How Frances Yip helped put Cantopop on the map, seen in a new exhibition

Yip is in Hong Kong to give 2 concerts and to attend the exhibition ‘Soundtrack of Our Lives: Joseph Koo x James Wong x the Rise of Cantopop’ held at Tai Kwun, where she was once an auxiliary policewoman

Singer Frances Yip today, at the “Soundtrack of Our Lives” exhibition that traces the importance of her collaboration with songwriters James Wong and Joseph Woo in the rise of Cantopop. Photo: Abdela Igmirien

Then & Now | Hong Kong stores’ floorwalkers helped the lost and kept an eye on the suspicious

Men with a certain bearing – often former military – were paid to walk round department stores like Lane Crawford and Whiteaway, Laidlaw & Co keeping an eye out

Letters | How Hong Kong can give tourists a smart street-level taste of history

Readers discuss how street signs can point visitors to historical stories of interest, and ways to improve taxi services

How 4 Hong Kong hotels help guests venture beneath city’s skin

The Park Lane, Ovolo, Mandarin Oriental and Heritage Lodge are among Hong Kong hotels offering activities like heritage tours to help visitors discover the city’s culture, history and stories.

A woman prays at Man Mo Temple in Hong Kong. Photo: Shutterstock

Then & Now | When supermarkets stopped being for the English-speaking elite in Hong Kong

Hong Kong supermarkets have gone from places with dress codes and English-speaking staff that served the wealthy elite to the ubiquitous neighbourhood stores of today.

The opening of a Wellcome supermarket in the Wah Fu Estate, in Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong. It was one of the first self-service supermarkets in Hong Kong. Photo: SCMP

Then & Now | How the mosquito net became ubiquitous in Hong Kong and across the tropics

Mosquitoes have long been a feature of life in Hong Kong and various methods have been devised to thwart the bloodthirsty pests, from kerosene in the drinking water to now-nostalgic nets.

‘Ghost staircase’, outdoor gym: Hong Kong architecture tour opens eyes

New group City Unseen begins a planned series of guided walks with a tour of Prince Edward that reveals curious architectural features and ways residents have repurposed urban spaces.

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Then & Now | Portuguese cultural advocate in Hong Kong whose words fell on stony ground

Eduardo Brazão encouraged Hong Kong’s Portuguese community to better appreciate themselves, but his enthusiasm was not widely shared.

Hong Kong-based Portuguese celebrate their National Day with a folk dance at the Club de Recreio in 1978. Three decades earlier, a Portuguese diplomat, Eduardo Brazão, had little joy when he sought to encourage the Portuguese community to celebrate their culture more. Photo: SCMP

Profile | Historian behind Gwulo.com on documenting Hong Kong’s past, and moving on

David Bellis, founder of Gwulo.com, a digital repository of expat memories, talks about documenting Hong Kong and moving to Wales, ahead of his upcoming farewell talk at the Royal Geographical Society.

Then & Now | When it came to racial labels, Asian people gave as good as they got

Racial terms historically directed at Europeans and Eurasians in Asia ran the gamut from ghosts and devils to cow stink and ‘three-quarters of a rupee’.

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Then & Now | Research on Hong Kong affairs outsourced to overseas universities

As the political climate in Hong Kong restricts the scope of topics for academic research, the centres of serious ‘Hong Kong Studies’ are now to be found far from the city’s shores.

The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, is among overseas institutions that have recently opened centres devoted to the study of Hong Kong affairs, as such studies in Hong Kong become constricted by politics. Photo: Shutterstock

Then & Now | Macanese writer-lawyer’s fiction gives powerful flavour of old Macau

Writer-lawyer Henrique de Senna Fernandes’ works paint a Macau as seen through the eyes of a nostalgic local who truly loved his hometown.

Henrique de Senna Fernandes, Macanese author whose novels and short stories lovingly portrayed the Macau of his youth in the 1930s and the lives of his community and of its Chinese residents. Photo: Nuno Bastos

Then & Now | How did Hong Kong POWs manage to fashion theatre costumes?

Amateur dramatics helped alleviate the boredom of prisoners of war during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, and creating the costumes involved every inch of innovation the inmates could muster.

When panic buying at a Hong Kong bakery chain led to a 3-day ‘cake run’

When a rumour swept Hong Kong that bakery chain Maria’s was going out of business, holders of vouchers for its cakes began panic buying. Some 400 bakers worked to meet demand until the ‘cake run’ ended.

Then & Now | Shopping, sedan chairs, seeing China – tips for 1930s Hong Kong tourists

Pearl of the Orient, a city of myriad lights – Hong Kong was promoted to 1930s visitors by China’s Nationalist government much as it would be for decades afterwards. No sedan chair rides these days, though.

Hong Kong as seen from Smuggler’s Pass above Kam Shan, in an undated photograph. Early tourist guides to the city encouraged visitors to go out into the countryside. Photo: Getty Images

How the heritage of Tai O, Hong Kong fishing village, is being preserved

With its young people moving away, the culture and history of Tai O on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island were at risk of being forgotten. A non-profit foundation stepped in 15 years ago to help preserve them.

Kayakers pass stilt houses in Tai O, a fishing village on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island. As more young people move away, efforts to preserve its culture and history, such as the opening of the Tai O Heritage Hotel, have kicked in. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Then & Now | Good luck finding expert guides to tell tourists truths about Hong Kong

Tourists to Hong Kong have long been fed rote-learned clichés about its history by uninspiring and uninspired guides. In today’s new normal, who would dare risk offering them anything different?

Jet Li used an umbrella from this 139-year-old company to fight

Hong Kong-based Leung So Kee Umbrella Factory is one of the oldest handmade umbrella makers in China, weathering storms from political instability to Japanese competition – but Jet Li was too much.

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Old Hong Kong
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.
last updated:
9 September, 2024
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