'Living gallery': Fighting to save Hong Kong's fading neon signs
Sign up now: Get insights on Asia's fast-moving developments
HONG KONG - Neon signs once transformed Hong Kong’s oldest neighbourhoods into a kaleidoscope of luminous colour after dark.
But most of them have been removed, with a few remnants now piled up in a ramshackle yard.
Citing safety concerns, the city has begun extinguishing the neon signs, which are widely seen as part of Hong Kong’s heritage.
“It is very heartbreaking to hear the sound of the glass being smashed,” conservationist Cardin Chan told AFP.
Ms Chan is part of a preservation campaign led by Tetra Neon Exchange (TNX), which has an open-air storage yard that houses a treasure trove of historic signs taken down by the city.
She says she is on a mission to save the glowing billboards, which once numbered in the thousands.
There are now around 500 signs left, based on a 2022 count carried out by TNX.
The group’s latest acquisition is a pair of double-circle-shaped behemoths depicting a bat with a coin in its claws. Once hoisted outside a pawn shop in the working-class Sham Shui Po district, news of their pending removal spread quickly on social media, drawing dozens of enthusiasts eager to take pictures of their last light.
“I’ll be very sad to see the signs come down. They’re beautiful things, with very warm, welcoming colours,” store owner Dan Ko said the day before they were removed. “They’re an integral part of the city’s visual history.”
‘An art piece’
Neon once illuminated the diverse businesses that pockmarked Hong Kong’s streets, announcing in hues of bright green, red, blue and yellow the availability of bridal wear, jewellery, hotel rooms, fishball noodles and much more.
“Our streets used to be a living gallery,” Ms Chan said.
Ms Cardin Chan (right) and her colleague measuring the size of two removed neon signs at a storage place in Hong Kong’s northwest.
PHOTO: AFP
But the signs pose a “persistent building safety problem”, according to Hong Kong’s buildings department, and uninstalling them can be a delicate task.
The ones from Mr Ko’s pawn shop were 3m in length and 2m in width, with dozens of handcrafted neon tubes running through them.
A worker spent hours meticulously removing the tubes while keeping the electronics intact, some of which had been untouched since they were first erected decades ago.
There are now around 500 signs left, based on a 2022 count carried out by Tetra Neon Exchange.
PHOTO: AFP
They depict a complex “double happiness” Chinese character atop the pawn shop’s name – unique to Mr Ko’s chain – which is what initially caught Ms Chan’s eye.
“It’s an art piece. It is not like a piece of junk metal,” she said.
She spent almost a month looking for Mr Ko, before convincing him to preserve his signs.
Ms Cardin Chan says she is on a mission to “save” the glowing billboards, which once numbered in the thousands.
PHOTO: AFP
They are now nestled among other faded plaques adorned with intricate designs – ranging from Chinese characters to palm trees – in a rural part of the city.
Ms Chan hopes to one day display them in a “museum-grade facility” safe from the elements, but TNX “can’t afford it” at the moment. “It was sad for me to see the signs removed. They could no longer be seen in their natural habitat,” she said.
“But I think as a consolation, at least we could give them a home instead of witnessing them being trashed.” AFP
