Thursday, September 8, 2011

Sunset - Paul Chin Pei (1971) - Waterloo Road, Kowloon Tong

Just after Zhongkang departs Ocean Terminal with his mother following behind we are treated to various shots of roads around the territory as they drive towards their destination. Here is one that is easy to identify thanks to the brown building that can be seen in the background on the left.


There are various elements in this screen grab that remain intact even today, despite other radical changes. Let's start off by naming the brown building I just mentioned, it's the Mary Knoll Convent School that sits on the block of land where Waterloo Road intersects with Boundary Street. The school is one of the so-called HK 'elite' schools that sees local parents climbing over each other to send their kids to - many converting to Catholicism just to improve their chances! Anyway, here is a grab from Google's excellent Streetview.


As you can see the school's low wall on the left can also still be seen, as can the white building at the far end of the wall. What has changed is that Waterloo Rd now has a flyover as it crosses Boundary Street. I don't know when it was built but you can see the slight slope on the more recent shot as we go further into the background. In 1971 it seems that traffic for straight on still had to stop at whatever traffic lights were at the intersection.

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