8 obscure historical facts about Hong Kong

Have you ever looked up and wondered why so many buildings in Hong Kong are painted a pale shade of pink? Turns out, it has everything to do with cost and very little to do with aesthetics. Historically, red was the colour of choice for many public housing estates, as it is the most affordable of all paints. Stemming from red ochre, a compound that is readily obtainable at low costs, it is the cheapest natural pigment to use. However, due to the intensity of the colour, building developers considered that a bright red building might be too aggressive for residents and the public, so they settled on a softer colour of pink, inadvertently spurring the establishment of pastel-coloured public housing estates.

All throughout Hong Kong, you will be able to spot these iconic and historical buildings with rounded corners. Most of these buildings with rounded corners date back to the 1950s and 1960s and are still fairly well-preserved today. Why are the corners rounded, you ask? One reason is to follow the shape of the pedestrian street corners and to enable pedestrians to see more easily. Another reason is that the rounded corners that projected views on the sidewalks were, in fact, originally the building’s balconies. As the balconies weren’t closed, contractors, developers, and owners did not have to pay a surcharge on the land. Over time, policymakers tolerated this problem of the enclosed balconies.

Walking down Lyndhurst Terrace today, it’s difficult to imagine that this locale was where Hong Kong’s earliest brothels were established. Located in Central and intersecting with Hollywood Road and Wellington Street, Lyndhurst Terrace was named after John Singleton Copley Lyndhurst, who was a British politician and lawyer. Around the mid-nineteenth century, many Western prostitutes set up business on Lyndhurst Terrace, making it one of the earliest places for pleasure seekers. Chinese brothels, on the other hand, were located in the Tai Ping Shan area. Lyndhurst Terrace is also notable as the location where Hong Kong’s homegrown Tai Cheong Bakery (泰昌餅家) first opened its famed pastry shop in 1954.

Throughout the time that the British ruled Hong Kong, they attempted in multiple instances to draw up invisible lines to split up and zone people to different areas. An example of this could be seen on Hollywood Road in Central. During the late nineteenth to the twentieth century, Hollywood Road acted as an invisible border, which served its purpose to divide the lives of foreigners and Hong Kong locals. South of Hollywood Road was given to the expats living in Hong Kong, while the north of Hollywood Road was given to the locals. Although it happened in the past, it has left a lasting impact on the way in which people live now and how Hong Kong land was developed and managed.

Looking back on Hong Kong’s history from a fishermen’s village to a dazzling metropolis, it’s hard to imagine that it was not always smooth sailing. In fact, the historical colony of Hong Kong did not initially start off as a functional port. Although trade partnerships were already in place and companies such as Swire were already prospering, there were still a lot of societal problems that troubled the city. Difficulties such as fever, plague, droughts, and seasonal typhoons impacted daily life and the budding infrastructure. There was also an abundance of criminal activity, proliferated through a network of opium dens, gambling clubs, and brothels that flourished throughout the city.