Wednesday, February 8, 2012

The World of Suzie Wong - William Holden (1960) - Ferry Street, Kowloon

Well, to finish off this series of Suzie Wong locations we have the final scene from the film which involves Suzie and her friends burning offerings to her baby's spirit at a temple. They exit the temple and turn right to walk away from camera and we see a bustling but I guess rather grotty harbour side.


For this location we have HK Man to thank. HK Man (a pseudonym obviously) spends his time taking "Then and Now" pictures all over HK. You can catch his excellent FLICKR stream here. But the snap we are interested in is this one.


Ferry Street was a small road in Yau Ma Tei that terminated at the harbour side we see above, and it wasn't until this area was later reclaimed that Ferry Street was able to grow a bit more into the modern version we know today which terminates at the junction with Argyle Street in Mongkok.

The road we can see to the right of the modern comparison is Kansu St, which means that Holden and Kwan would have exited the temple somewhere around where today's Saigon Street Playground now stands. Now, I do have access to a 1964 map of this area and there is no temple marked here so I can only think that some other antiquated building was used in lieu of a real temple - it wouldn't be hard for the filmmakers to make it look like a temple to be honest. But if anyone can tell me there was a real temple at this site I would be interested to hear any more information.

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