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Old Hong Kong

This Hong Kong hotel was the stars’ gateway to the city

Once the pinnacle of opulence and grandeur, the Repulse Bay Hotel hosted guests like Ernest Hemingway, George Bernard Shaw and Wallis Simpson.

13 Nov 2024 - 5:02PM

When Arnold Palmer hit some ‘pretty mediocre’ tee shots in Hong Kong in 1964

7 Nov 2024 - 6:15AM

How Hong Kong’s tailoring industry has evolved through the ages

5 Nov 2024 - 5:45PM

What was Hong Kong’s telephone system like before smartphones?

The numerical prefixes used to indicate where callers were dialling from – New Territories, Hong Kong Island, Kowloon or outlying islands.

31 Oct 2024 - 6:15AM

A telephone operator transfers a call from Hong Kong to mainland China in 1972. Photo: SCMP Archive

Meet the little-known columnist who wrote about Hong Kong history and society

Until recently, writing about local history was the sole preserve of hobbyists whose work went largely unrewarded – just look at Lo Kam.

26 Oct 2024 - 7:15AM

Profile | From child star to activist, Hong Kong actress Josephine Siao’s career

Josephine Siao began her acting career aged 6 and made over 100 films before becoming deaf. She is an activist against child sexual abuse.

8 Nov 2024 - 7:52AM

How two imperial heirs of the Song dynasty sought refuge in Hong Kong

As the Mongols rampaged across China in the 13th century, two young heirs to the imperial throne fled to Lantau – but how did they end up there and what happened to them?

21 Oct 2024 - 10:34AM

Created by local artists, the murals in Tai O, Hong Kong, give tourists insight into the village’s history and culture. Photo: Mabel Lui

How movie Soldier of Fortune was an exposé of Hong Kong expat life

Released in 1955 and starring Clark Gable and Susan Hayward, Soldier of Fortune came into its own as an exposé of expat life in Hong Kong.

4 Oct 2024 - 7:15AMvideocam

No walnuts in Chinese walnut cookies? A Hong Kong baker explains

Walnut cookies are still made the old-fashioned way – and without any nuts – by Hong Kong baker Man Fuk-on, 73. He talks about the importance of preserving tradition.

28 Sep 2024 - 8:52AM

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

17 Sep 2024 - 11:29AM

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

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

Wan Chai neighbourhood fixture Yat Sing Toys closes its doors as shopping preferences shift, triggering wave of nostalgia.

7 Sep 2024 - 5:29PM

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

As mainlanders flocked to Hong Kong after 1949, they brought with them Shanghai-style bathhouses and their many personal grooming services – and the term ‘Shanghai’ become a byword for quality

4 Sep 2024 - 2:45PM

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

29 Aug 2024 - 11:45AM

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.

20 Aug 2024 - 12:45PM

Canadian artist Kitty Wong with some of her work, inspired by nostalgia for the Hong Kong food and fashion of her childhood, currently on show in the city. Photo: Kitty Wong

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

21 Aug 2024 - 2:27PM

Kam Singh, a doorman at the Excelsior Hotel in Causeway Bay, in February 2019. Photo: SCMP

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

20 Aug 2024 - 8:45AM

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

31 Jul 2024 - 6:30PM

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.

30 Jul 2024 - 1:27PM

Affectionately known as “ding dings”, the trams are one of the earliest forms of public transport in Hong Kong, with a history stretching back 119 years. Photo: Ricky Chung

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.

17 Aug 2024 - 5:57PMvideocam

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

29 Jul 2024 - 2:14PM

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

25 Jul 2024 - 10:35AM

Customers shopping at Lane Crawford’s Des Voeux Road location in 1977. Photo: SCMP Archive

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

20 Jul 2024 - 1:11PM

Tourists at Upper Lascar Row in Sheung Wan in February 2018. Photo: Winson Wong

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.

15 Jul 2024 - 2:59PM

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.

28 Jun 2024 - 8:02AM

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.

22 Jun 2024 - 7:52AM

When in 1976 villagers in Sha Tau Kok, in Hong Kong’s New Territories slept in the open for fear of an earthquake, they made sure to use tents with mosquito nets. Photo: SCMP

‘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.

20 Jun 2024 - 7:48AM

Participants on a City Unseen walking tour of Prince Edward. Photo: Joshua Wolper

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.

17 Jun 2024 - 3:06PM

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.

11 Jun 2024 - 12:57PM

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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