Hing Wah Street - Now and Then

For those interested in Then/Now comparisons (I've done afew before) I popped down to Cheung Sha Wan (it's a 20 minute walk for me) to take some pictures of the area along Hing Wah Street where some scenes were filmed for Das Mädchen von Hongkong back in 1973.

First up is the view along Shun Ning Road from Hing Wah Street. Sadly the street market has long since disappeared and the intersection/junction is now quite busy and dangerous. There are some things I won't risk for my art, so I had to snap this from a bit further away on the far side of Hing Wah Street. The ornate slope in the distance is the rear entrance to Caritas Medical Centre (known locally as Ming Oi Hospital). I don't think there is a single building in the film image that still exists today. It's all been redeveloped.

Next up is the view up Hing Wah Street looking towards the old version of the So Uk Estate in the background. For reference, the junction where the first image along Shun Ning Road was taken is the one behind the actor. The market that ran down the middle of the road (right of image) has long since gone and the large central reservation area of the road has been turned into beautified rectangular traffic islands that stretch between each junction. The So Uk Estate still exists but has been completely rebuilt and reconfigured into a high-rise version just in the last few years.

Next up is a shot of the truck that the two main characters try to flee from the bad guys in. The camera captured the vehicle as it drove down Hing Wah Street and was about to turn across at the junction with Un Chau Street (this road is actually called Yuen Chau Street but the missing initial "Y" is taken from an older form of anglicisation/romanisation).

Although the main block at the back has been redeveloped, at the far right you can see the Castle Peak Road facing section of the Wo Hing Building. This place is (currently) still around, albeit covered in scaffolding (see my comparison pic). This could mean imminent destruction, but I think it might just be because they are renovating the exterior. Time will tell. This photo shows you what has happened to the central reservation.

As the truck rattles past the camera location we get to see a bit more of the area. To take both of these last two images I had to stand on the SE corner of the junction with Un Chau Street and I think it is a fairly good match to where the film camera must have been sited at the time. As you can see, as in the previous image the old buildings here have all gone. Both sides of this junction have been replaced by a pair of matching developments called Heya Aqua and Heya Crystal (don't ask me what it means, HK residential development names are some of the most pretentious, nonsensical things I've ever come across).

The thing to note is how much space the older buildings took above the pavement. Pretty much all building stock of a certain era in Hong Kong (pre-70s?) was able to build over the pavement area. This maximised the liveable/usable area of a building from the first floor up, but also meant pedestrians could shelter from the stifling heat/sun or torrential rain. Modern buildings, due to their height/weight, no longer have these cantilvered levels and as such the space along each side of a road is more open - as you can see from the above newer images - but to the detriment of pedestrian comfort/safety and certainly to the detriment of a building's character. But that's just my old fashioned opinion, apparently.

Anyway, that's your lot for now but expect more of the same over the coming months.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Hing Fong Road, Kwai Chung

I was having difficulty reconciling the following image with modern Kwai Chung even though I had a fairly good idea of what I was looking at - Tsing Yi in the background is a bit of a giveaway. The problem was the buildings in the foreground and mid distance. Nothing today matches up, and there's a good reason for it as I have recently discovered. This is also my excuse for not posting it earlier :)

This still is from a sequence in Das Mädchen von Hongkong when Fuchsberger is being attacked in his friend's office. As he dangles from the balcony he looks back and this is one of the views he gets. Now, in reality I'm not sure this was taken from that place (i.e. the Wader studio) but it was certainly nearby as it shows two old Government Housing Estates that have since been rebuilt. In the foreground is the original Kwai Hing Estate built between 1970 and 1972. According to wiki, structural defects were found in the concrete and the whole place had to be ripped down in the late 1980s and the current Kwai Hing Estate is what replaced it.

The estate at the back left is the original Kwai Fong Estate, built between 1971 and 1972, and it too was found to have structural problems leading to its eventual replacement by the current estate. So there you go, two shoddily built 1970's estates. It looks as though shoddy building practices are a long established tradition in HK. Anyway, the road you can see running from the bottom is therefore Hing Fong Road.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Connaught Road Waterfront, Central

I still have a few outstanding locations to identify for this film, but in the meantime will leave you with a shot of the Central waterfront. Fuchsberger gets on a ferry and heads over to Central and we get a couple of vies of some of the buildings that stood at the "then" waterfront.

If you follow this blog frequently then you might recognise this small cluster of buildings from a previous view of them courtesy of Bons Baisers de Hongkong. The building with the star decoration on it (part of the 1972 Christmas decorations) is the Nan Fung Tower building.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

A nice view of the pre-high-rise Peninsula Hotel as viewed from the harbour. It looks like it was undergoing some renovation of the east wing because all I can see is the fabric cladding that always gets put up when that kind of stuff is going on. To the left is the old YMCA building with the Hankow Centre behind it, and the old Marine Police HQ can just be seen on the far left of the lower picture.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Xmas Decorations 1972, Central

Although released in 1973, the filming of Das Mädchen von Hongkong took place in December of 1972. So it's not surprising that the film maker caught some footage of that year's Xmas decorations. Here is a couple of shots taken in Central that show the old HSBC HQ and Chater Road (with Prince's Building on the left and the Mandarin Oriental on the right). I think the both shots were taken from the same location but the camera just swiveled right to get the shot looking up Chater Road.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Hong Kong Airport, Kai Tak

The old airport pops up, as it does in pretty much every HK-based film, but no swooping shots of planes coming into land, rather just a few shots of the observation deck.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Angler's Beach, Sham Tseng

The dead body of Fuchsberger's buddy ends up getting washed up by a pier. Believe it or not but the low lying headland in the background is actually the north east section of Ma Wan island with the west end of HK Island in the far hazy distance. The angle of HK in the background behind that part of Ma Wan gives me a rough indication of the location somewhere around Angler's Beach.

Actually, we've seen this place before on this blog - it was the beach used in one of the Yellowthread Street episodes which had a bunch of refugee bodies wash up on it (I see a pattern forming...) - although I think at that time the film crew were further to the west end of the beach.

These days there are still two piers on the beach, but neither look like they are likely candidates. I'm also not sure how the expansion of Castle Peak Road affected the area. There looks to be a village name (?) on the white/red sign at the back but I can't read the furthest character - Chinese readers feel free to help.

Most astonishing though is really how much the view has changed. The Tsing Ma bridge now spans the gap to the left of the headland and of course Ma Wan itself has been completely redeveloped into the Park Island development.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Kwai Chung Factory Area

We've been over here in an earlier post because it was along Wah Sing St where the baddie's warehouse was located. However, I forgot to add these screengrabs that show the view from the building that supposedly housed the murder victim's office.

The "office" had a terrace at the back that looked down onto the area now occupied by the Kowloon Commerce Centre and Roxy Industrial Centre - between Tai Lin Pai Road and Kwai Cheong Road. It's the open area with the bus depot on it in the next picture.

The terrace is interesting though because the view from it implies that it may have been part of the old Wader Studio. Sadly I have very little information about the place but it's possible (seeing as Wader was used in another scene) that this terrace was on the Wader back-lot. I don't think anyone will ever be able to answer this for me so I may have to go and find an aerial shot from the same time to confirm.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Kowloon Wharf and Godowns, Tsim Sha Tsui

From one harbourfront location to another, this time across the harbour and over to Kowloon side and the cargo processing area that was around before the Gateway and Harbour Centre were built. 

The waterside road that the cops are walking along has since been turned in to Gateway Boulevard. Most of the scenes filmed around here don't show the various water side buildings, but we've seen them on the blog previously (such as here and here).

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - West Point Godowns, Sai Ying Pun

Here's one of the locations that I couldn't initially find but have since determined that they were the now defunct (and redeveloped) wharf side godowns along the Sai Ying Pun waterfront. Gwulo refers to them as the West Point Godowns. If you look at the colour picture from 1955 attached to that webpage you'll be able to see the pier that was aligned parallel to the waterfront with its two huts.

Here they are as seen on film. That's Connaught Road running along the waterfront. Gwulo.com notes that this is the site that later became Connaught Gardens.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

A very quick and limited glimpse of Hanoi Road as Fuchsberger walks along it. The road can be identified by the various neon signs that were still in place when Roger Moore came this way in April 1974 to film The Man with the Golden Gun.

You can see some of that signage on this post from the aforementioned Bond film.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Nathan Road, Kowloon

Here's a quickie to illustrate again how some of these films have reused footage from earlier movies for their establishing shots. It's more common than I realised and even Robert Clouse was at it when he reused the famous panning shot of HK from the beginning of Enter the Dragon and inserted it into the beginning of Golden Needles. In fact, there is a large section of this film in the opening credits that was taken from the earlier 1960's German films that I have already covered.

Two shots here that we have seen previously in earlier films. The first one is the collection of neon lighting hanging off the Alhambra Building in Yau Ma Tei. We saw both of these shots recently in Heisser Hafen Hongkong.

This one can be seen in its original use in the top picture of this post.

And the following shot, already established as being on the corner of Nathan and Nelson Street in Mongkok can be seen as the second picture here.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Bristol Avenue, Tsim Sha Tsui

The girl from Hong Kong find accommodation at a bar. The Honolulu Bar and Restaurant was a real place and was situated at #2 Bristol Avenue in Tsim Sha Tsui. The earlier rooftop chase was filmed on the roofs of the buildings in that area, although this specific location appears to have been replaced in 1976 by the Yes & Right House. Actually it looks to me as though some site formation work was going on at the corner of Mody and Bristol, so this is possibly the groundwork for the construction of the aforementioned building. This means that the exact location might also have been where the Yes and Right Building currently ends. It's certainly possible that the street numbers were changed when everything was razed.

The first and last shots show us looking south down Bristol Avenue towards Mody Road, the second shot is facing back the other way towards Carnarvon Road. The high view on picture 3 was most likely captured from Mirador Mansions which occupies the block where the camera appears to have been placed.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Connaught Road, Central

A rather nice colourful shot from Connaught Road giving us views of the old Standard Chartered Bank (formerly Chartered Bank) building, Princes Building, Mandarin Oriental as well as a distant view of the old GPO building at the corner of Pedder St, here's a close up I posted previously.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Deep Water Bay, Hong Kong

We've already seen a little bit of Deep Water Bay from the grounds of 68 Deep Water Bay Road, but we also get a closer look as Fuchsberger escapes a junk to swim ashore. The structure in the background is the Victoria Recreation Club.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon

Here is an interesting set of shots for those wondering what Tsim Sha Tsui looked like before the so-called "The Masterpiece" was constructed with the URA's usual scant regard for sympathetic design.

This scene is a follow on from when Fuchsberger is cornered in his friend's office (with the cold storage warehouse in the background that was actually in Kwai Chung!). He escapes from the room and all of a sudden ends up on the Tsim Sha Tsui rooftops.

The cluster of buildings where the chaps are scuttling over the rooftops are the exact buildings that were removed to make way for the redevelopment. Actually, they're looking in reasonable shape in this film but by the time came for demolition they were looking pretty sketchy - but nothing some TLC couldn't have fixed.

The view has changed drastically with additional high rise development now obscuring the signal tower on Blackhead Point (that;s still there thankfully), but there are some familiar buildings to be spotted around in the background including Chung king Mansion, Mirador Mansion, Peninsula Apartments and the Lyton Building. All those nice looking balconied low rises have all been redeveloped. 

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Shun Ning Road, Cheung Sha Wan

The "girl from Hong Kong" of the title works in a street market. Luckily for me this is an area I am familiar with because I live not far away and had the unfortunate experience of attending the nearby hospital on more than one occasion. This whole area in undergoing redevelopment and there aren't many of the old tenement buildings left.

These first two screengrabs show us looking west along Shun Ning Road. The sloped retaining wall at the back is the old entrance to what is now Caritas Hospital - I'm not so sure about the history of the hospital or how long it's been there but the buildings occupying that space now are fairly new.

Part of the market also extended down Hing Wah Street, Even today the road is very wide and there used to be market stalls that occupied what is now a beautified central reservation. The road slopes considerably up towards the junctions with Shun Ning Road and Po On Road and at the top was the old So Uk Estate. You can see one of the old buildings in So Uk in the background.

Hing Wah Street with So Uk at the back