To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Lobster Bay, Clearwater Bay

Just before I moved to Hong Kong in 2006, I made a brief house-hunting trip in 2005 and, being an avid diver, signed up for some local scuba as well. I was taken by "Splash" (then owned and run by an amiable chap called Damon Rose) to a shore dive site at the end of Lung Ha Wan Road. There's a promontory here which is used for kite flying, and the coast surrounding this area has long been a popular filming location over the years.

The stony beach where I dived is the "Lung Ha Wan" (aka Lobster Bay) that lends its name to this whole area. It's the first beach you come to when heading down the end of Lung Ha Wan Road. Strewn allover the beach are the concrete fragments of a former ramp that, I was told, was a popular smuggling location for local triads until the army came and blew it up. It turns out the demolition took place in 1992 and there is is comment on Gwulo relating to this (I also posted a picture on Gwulo many years ago).

I had wondered what it looked like before the ramp was blown up, and now we need wonder no more because it appears several times in To Be Number One. It's quite the revelation because I wasn't expecting the ramp to be so big.

In the film we see this location on at least three occasions. The first time is when the newly-minted gangsters have enough money to finally smuggle their families into Hong Kong from China on a small sampan. In later scenes, this is also the same place where the gang pick up the opium blocks they have just stolen from a rival gang and, finally, where Tiger Lui's mistress is taken to and shipped back to China after she has been kidnapped by Ng.