Friday, August 7, 2015

Chinese Box - Jeremy Irons (1997) - South Wall Road, Kowloon City

The next scene involves Irons and Gong Li heading up to a rooftop in Kowloon City to watch the planes come roaring by as they land at the nearby Kai Tak Airport. Thankfully, the rather unique configuration of road around here allows us to see that they were on the roof top of #452 Prince Edward Road West at the junction with South Wall Road.


 Given the amount of change in this are over the past 10 years it's a bit surprising that we can identify anything at all, but the various elevated sections of Prince Edward Road and Argyle Street put us right at the far edge of Kowloon City. Sadly, the curved building immediately next door to their location (right side, bottom pic) has since been redeveloped into a high-rise monstrosity called Prince Ritz (Hong Kong residential building names are increasingly pretentious), however, the blue painted building in the background is still around and is the Katherine Building. The higher building in the far distance above Gong Li's head is the Astoria - located next to the Kowloon City Police Station along Argyle Street.

1 comment:

gweilo8888 said...

Perhaps apocryphal, but I was once told that shortly before or after a typhoon passed HK, a 747's undercarriage clipped one of the streetlamps visible in the third screenshot on landing.

I'd give it some credence, because even on a normal approach they couldn't have been clearing them by more than 60-80 feet. If anybody can confirm or refute the story, I'd love to know, though...

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