Showing posts with label I Knew a Man. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I Knew a Man. Show all posts

Monday, May 4, 2015

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Angler's Beach, Sham Tseng

In I Knew a Man, the last episode of Yellowthread Street, Vietnamese refugees are dumped overboard a vessel when a police operation to apprehend the people smugglers (the leader was actually played by 70's kung fu film stalwart, Lo Lieh) goes awry. The bodies of the drowned are washed ashore on a beach.


Believe it or not, the green spit of land you can see above (with HK Island in the far background on the top left) is actually the northern coastline of Ma Wan island - Ngau Lan Tsui (牛欄咀). It's barely recognisable today courtesy of the Park Island development and the Tsing Ma bridge now spanning the channel to the left of it.


The beach (called 釣魚灣泳灘 in Chinese) is still here but there has also been much more development right behind it beyond the treeline largely due to the widening of Castle Peak Road (which also affected the original front wall of Dragon Garden a little way up the road from here) and the construction of several large residential developments along the coastline including Sea Crest Villas.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Tsuen Wan Chinese Permanent Cemetery, Tsuen Wan

The final scene from the whole Yellowthread Street series was shot at the Tsuen Wan Chinese Permanent Cemetery. We've seen it before on this blog because the film makers behind Contagion also used it as the location for the ransom exchange.

Riviera Gardens behind Chan and Lonnen (brand new at the time)


As you can imagine the cemetery itself hasn't really changed at all, but the background has seen extensive development. The lower picture shows Tsing Yi in the background. The southern end of it (on the left) has now become completely taken over by reclamation for Container Terminal 9 - this is the same area where the famous QE wreck was.

The bridge at the back is the original Tsing Yi Bridge - the first bridge to connect the mainland with Tsing Yi Island. It has since been doubled (another bridge built parallel and used for Kowloon-bound traffic) to ease the burden on the original which opened in the mid-70's. It has also been complemented by a closer bridge called the Cheung Tsing Bridge and in the far distance connecting the southern end of Tsing Yi to West Kowloon is the newly built Stonecutters Bridge (remember that since this show was made Stonecutters Island has been joined on to Kowloon via reclamation).

The chimney at the left is the old Kwai Chung Incinerator chimney. It closed in 1997 but the chimney stayed up for another 10 years while they cleaned the surrounding land up of the various poisons that had built up over the years.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Cheung Chau, Outlying Islands

As we slowly wind down the look back at Yellowthread Street (I've already done 70 posts for it - the highest count for a single show on this blog so far), here are some locations from the very last episode I Knew A Man.

Head-cop Vale (played by Ray Lonnen, who passed away just last year in 2014) heads out to Cheung Chau to try and find the culprit behind a bunch of illegal immigrant drownings.

Of course, first he has to head to the Outlying Islands ferry pier...


...and then we get treated to the very familiar (well, to me at least) view of the centre of Cheung Chau Island as the ferry pulls in. 


The lower picture is of course the view looking from Cheung Chau towards Lantau Island in the background.