Friday, August 2, 2013

Noble House (Mini series) - Pierce Brosnan (1988) - Aberdeen Harbour, Hong Kong

I always felt the onscreen version of Four Finger Wu (played by Khigh Dheigh) was a bit of a wimp compared to the nasty conniving book version, but then again I guess massive parts of the book's various plots are left out for the sake of simplicity. Anyhoo, Aberdeen is where the smuggler/pirate/down right nasty piece of work lives in his boat and Dunross goes to meet him there.

We have a nice shot of the harbour taken from, what seems to be, the Ap Lei Chau bridge (finished circa '83) looking towards the western entrance to the harbour. You can see that, even in 1988/89, the harbour was still used as a living area for many of the boat dwellers, most of which have now been moved ashore to Govt housing.


Look carefully at the hillside in the third picture and you can see old Police Station which now serves as a youth centre. The bottom picture shows the Ap Lei Chau Govt housing estate.

3 comments:

gweilo8888 said...

Not really connected to the TV series in any way, but there is probably no place in the world as hugely changed in such a short period as Ap Lei Chau. That bridge and the power station were largely responsible.

I have a series of books published as the result of a detailed study of the island as it was, and it documents in stupendous detail pretty-much every resident of the island, their dwellings, lives, animals, crops, and more.

It's the second-most densely populated spot on earth now, but then it really was a sleepy little place. I'd love to have an explore and see if there are any signs left of its earlier life...

Anonymous said...

Hi there,

At least the old temples are still there. Some old and abandoned graves still exist. I thought it had been the most populated island a few years back when the population exceeded 100,000.......

T

gweilo8888 said...

Could well be, I was just going with Wikipedia for the "second most populated" figure, but we all know Wiki's regularly wrong. ;-)

Thanks for the info. It's one of two places I have on my radar to try and browse for historical remnants one day. The other is the equally-interesting Sunshine Island (Chau Kung To).

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