Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - King's Road, Quarry Bay

This episode, The Dragon Cup, actually has a location in it that took a long time to track down, simply because the area has changed so much over the last 30 years that I was having a hard time reconciling the screen captures with how it looks today. Again, the mapping office aerial pictures were crucial to identifying where this was.

What you are seeing is how the section of King's Road in Quarry Bay used to look when it was largely filled with Swire/Tai Koo-related infrastructure. In the top two images we are looking west back along King's Road. The steep slope with the building at the top was located where Westland Gardens now sits. The building was one of the Tai Koo buildings but I'm not sure what it's role was.


as the car passes the location of the camera, although the background is blurred from the camera motion, it's possible to make out a flat area with a wall and gate. This open area corresponds with today's Fortis Centre/Eastern Centre and Shipyard Lane that runs in a loop around these two office buildings.


These final two images show the view looking east towards the curve in King's Road that existed prior to the road being straightened and becoming Kornhill Road. If you look at modern maps, you'll see that King's Road actually still follows its original route here, turning north where Kornhill Road begins. The tree covered hillside seen at the road bend below was excavated at some point. The road was straightened and the massive Kornhill development (including the north and south developments as well as the plaza) were built in the location. It is completely unrecognisable today. The excavation/removal of the hill and subsequent creation of Kornhill Road et al occurred sometime around the mid 1980s.


This same clip was also used in the later episodes Double Jeopardy, Lady Godiva.

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