Thursday, February 6, 2014

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Salisbury Road, Kowloon

In the flashback part of the film (well, I guess that is most of it isn't it) we see a supposedly 'young' Betty trying to cross the road in Kowloon. She's standing at Salisbury Road just a little along from the front of the Sheraton Hotel. This is an area that has changed immensely due to several factors including the reclamation that allowed the New World Centre to built, the Regal Kowloon - which has since become the Intercontinental, the removal of the old KCR terminus, only to be replaced by East TST station.


This of course was in the day when you could actually cross Salisbury Road at ground level. Now it seems to be a futile exercise in pedestrianism (is that even a word?) and instead the subways and underpasses have been designed to take you past as many shops as possible on your travels across the road. Since the road design was changed to allow quicker through traffic to use an underpass, it has also widened significantly. Sometimes I think modern life is complicated just for the sake of it...


There is a quick glimpse back up the road as well. It shows how the area looked before the newer East TST station was constructed. In front of the retaining wall on the front of Signal Hill (the wall is still there, just hidden) was an open space that also contained a children's playground.


In the screen grab above you can see the retaining wall and the trees mark the area where the playground was. When the station was built they used up the whole of that space for the station and stuck a new playground on the roof of the new station building. Thankfully Signal Hill has so far escaped all the surrounding development unscathed. Just the odd bit of obscuring its once open view, but if you fancy a quiet time in TST it is a great place to walk to - especially since the New World Centre was knocked down.


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