Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Nam Sang Wai, Yuen Long

To go and seek advice on the rogue Red Pole (a Red Pole is the Triad equivalent of an enforcer), Brady goes to see and old friend in Nam Sang Wai. Nam Sang Wai is an area north of Yuen Long New Twon that still houses many, quite attractive, fish ponds. We've been here before on this blog when we were looking at Danny Lee's River of Fury.

It's quite difficult to ascertain the exact point where Brady (Mark McGann) is simply because the area doesn't have too many identifiable landmarks, however, the following picture gives us a slight clue because it contains some of the buildings that can still be found on the nearby Tung Tau Industrial Estate. The building to the left of Brady is the Hung Wai Industrial Building. If you look closely it seems to be empty, this could be because it was newly built in 1988 (I'm still unsure if the filming of this series occurred in 1989 or 1990).

The next shot shows us a wider angle of the same direction with a nearer building partially obscured by the panel at the end of the wooden platform. This building is also still around and sits on the northern limit of the industrial estate. It's the Mansfield Industrial Centre, also completed 1988 which makes me think 1988 was perhaps the year when the estate was itself finally up and running.

Anyway, if we take a rough approximation of the buildings and work backwards we can kind of see the area where the filming took place. It's near a small hamlet called Chung Hau Yu Man San Tsuen (涌口漁民新村). Sadly Streetview doesn't venture into that part of the area so I have instead marked it on the location link at the bottom of the post. In the meantime we will have to make do with a Streetview grab from a short distance away in Shan Pui Village. As you can see it's not too far away from where the film camera was positioned for the lower shot.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Former British Military Hospital, King's Park

This next one has had me literally chasing my tail because it has been really difficult to track down. The location is quite important because it occupies a large section of Episode 4 called Middleman which concerns a criminal taking Pak (Tzi Ma) hostage in a local hospital.

The film makers made quite a bit of effort to disguise the real location, more than is warranted, I feel, but here are a few examples...

A few red herrings here because, yes, there is a place called Central Hospital, but it's not this place. Secondly, there is the Chinese name 中央醫院 (Jung Yeung Yi Yuen), which is the original name of a venue now known as the Sai Ying Pun Jockey Club Polyclinic, and no, it's not that place either.

Then there is another red herring in the form of an address we see at one point (when Marenta - played by Robert Taylor - heads off to do some investigation on the 'Middle Man'). We see a hospital invoice. Check out the address below. It says 222 Waterloo Road.

This, coincidentally (or not, as I suspect is the case) is the actual address of the Baptist Hospital in Kowloon Tong. Hmmm.

So, why these guys went to so much trouble I don't know. But either way, it has had me scratching my head until I was doing some research on another matter (as is usually the case) and I discovered some great pictures on FLICKR of the old British Military Hospital on Wylie Road in King's Park.

Here's the ink: https://flic.kr/p/8CAhHr.

A wiki entry can also be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Military_Hospital,_Hong_Kong#King.27s_Park

Anyway, suffice to say, the other major reason I had so much difficulty is because this building has been replaced by a huge apartment complex called Parc Palais. You can read a bit more on wiki but the upshot is that the hospital was decommissioned on 30th June 1996 and eventually demolished in the early 00's before Parc Palais was built (opened in 2004).

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Kui In Fong, Sheung Wan

Just before we see the fight that gets started on Sai Street, we see Brady (played by a very wooden Mark McGann) driving a car down a road pretending to be a buyer but really just trying to see what the girl owner is up to (selling drugs in case you didn't know).

Like in the show, this road is the one that leads down to Sai Street, so when we catch a passing glimpse of the fight that is erupting there between Bruce Payne and the triads, it's not a bad approximation of what you would see in reality - although the place has undergone a huge amount of redevelopment since Yellowthread Street was filmed in the late 1980's (it was shown in the UK in 1990...I think?). The fenced area on the right of the screen grabs is Blake Garden. Here's the modern streetview.