Old Hong Kong

Her eyesight failing, Liu Kam-lan sits, hands clasped together, in San Uk Tsuen, a village in Hong Kong’s rural New Territories a few miles from the border with mainland China. Around her, other elderly women chat and laugh. She is asked to sing. In a lilting voice, she begins a “bridal lament” in the disappearing dialect of the Weitou people, who settled in the area during the Song dynasty (960-1279). The song is one of sadness, and tells a story dating back more than 60 years. Like other young women in her village, Liu was married off to a man she had never met. The Weitou women’s bridal laments are songs of anger for the matchmaker they felt betrayed them. “In the darkness, by the wooden

German photographer Michael Wolf, who spent his last 25 years in Hong Kong, died on April 24 at the age of 65. He shot scenes from Japan’s crowded subway trains in Tokyo Compression (2010) and portraits of Hong Kong’s Cantonese opera performers, but is best known for his collection on the city’s crammed urban landscapes: Architecture of Density (2009). Throughout his years in Hong Kong, Wolf was constantly excited by what others in the city might find mundane or too small to wonder at: shrines to earth god Tu Di Gong wedged into busy shop windows; illuminating glass walls in night-time Central; sunrises on outlying island Cheung Chau where he lived; and old corner houses earmarked for demoli

Childhood is a time for exploration and fun, and in 1960s and ’70s Hong Kong, the city’s corners left ample space for discovery for those growing up in the city. Children found the small playgrounds and jungle gyms nestled among Hong Kong’s dense urban cityscape. They turned everyday niches into play areas, and even a piece of wood into a seesaw. Click through the gallery to see how a childhood in 1960s Hong Kong was one of the most unique around. 

The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank was established in 1865 in Hong Kong, founded to facilitate trade – including opium – in the burgeoning British colony. That same year it started to issue bank notes – a practice which Hong Kong’s banks continue to this day. Since those beginnings, HSBC Holdings has become the 7th largest bank in the world. South China Morning Post photographer Felix Wong visited the bank’s archive center in Hong Kong for a glimpse at the beginnings of the institution.

The past is a place of black-and-white memories – sepia-tinged at best. But sometimes, it’s brought back to life in vivid color. In the newly published book Old Hong Kong in Colour, historian Otto C.C. Lam has curated a selection of photographs dating from between 1948 and 1969, which comprise some of the earliest color images of the city. While much of the then-British colony has changed entirely, there are still some scenes that are entirely unchanged, some 70 years later. Check out the gallery, above, for more.