To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Lam Tei Quarry, Tuen Mun

A final post for the time being for To Be Number One. After finding out that they were betrayed by Loud Hung, he is kidnapped from work as he is about to scarper abroad, and is taken to a nearby quarry where Ng is waiting for him. This particular patch of waste land is Lam Tei Quarry - although it no longer looks like this as you would expect from another 30 years of quarrying. I had to scour a 1993 aerial image map to ID this place, but actually the Industrial History of Hong Kong website has an image that shows the water and circular pile of aggregate you can see below.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Island House, Tai Po

It's a bit hard trying to figure out which property (or properties) was used for the interior of Lui Lok's house, seen when the gang leaders decide to take each other out during a supposed friendly "gong sau" meeting on neutral ground. However, the exteriors are a different matter and a hint is given in the acknowledgements as the filmmakers thank the World Wide Fund for Nature. It turns out that the location was Island House in Tai Po, now a WWF office and a place I am quite familiar with thanks to my 6 years living just up the road from here.

Anyway, this is the place where Big Sha and Ho fight off a horde of marauding triad gunslingers before being rescued on a motorbike by "Dummy". If you want a comparison, someone has kindly included a bunch of photo sphere's all around the property. This one relates to the bottom image.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - St George's Building, Central

Ng's right hand man, Wan (Waisee Lee) goes to the travel agent to book tickets for him and his family to Canada when things get a bit hot. The angle on the top image could only have been taken from the ground floor of the St George's Building in Central. I have no idea if there is/was a real travel agency in there.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Koshi Cottage, Perkins Road

Ng's mansion in this story is a rather grand and opulant place located in Jardines Lookout. The address is 10 Perkins Road and a rather big clue to its location is given in the top image below. So blatant was this that I initially assumed it was a fake sign and perhaps 10 Perkins Road was one of Ng's real life properties. I don't think it was, but as a test I had a look at a 1991 aerial image of Jardines Lookout and located the property that matched the one seen in the images below and guess what - yep, 10 Perkins Road. Sadly, this grand old property is no more and it was replaced by a newer version in 1999. However, the property layout remains similar with the steep drive and front garden (though it now has a swimming pool in there). The new house retains the "Koshi Cottage" name.

Despite his immense wealth, Ng's real, main property at the height of his power was a rather more 'humble' place in Kowloon Tong (yep, the properties in Kowloon Tong are significantly smaller than some of those found at Jardines Lookout). In fact, I even wrote a blog post about it on my old history/exploration blog thing (now deleted, but you can see an archive here). The property became a 'Love Motel' called the "Kent Hotel", but it abruptly closed a few years ago and the old house was knocked down and replaced by something twice as high and twice as ugly.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Hong Kong University Main Building

The police headquarters where Chief Inspector Tiger Lui (Kenneth Tsang) is based is actually the main building at HKU. This is where Ng first sees Lui's mistress and their son and schemes to get on Lui's good side by getting rid of what is obviously a nuisance to Lui. The polished granite(?) staircase leads from the main entrance up to the first floor and thankfully, everything you see in the screencaps appears to be intact. Here's a more recent view of the staircase that you can compare with the bottom image below.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Arbuthnot Road, Central

Ming's (Lawrence Ng) apartment, where he is having an affair with Fat Kwan's girlfriend May (Amy Yip), is located on Artbuthnet Road. Sadly I don't know the name of the building because it has long been demolished and replaced with a development called  "Bel Mount Garden". Anyway, it's here where he and May are rudely interrupted, mid-coitus, as Fat Kwan's men burst in and threaten them both. Ming escapes by jumping out of his window in the buff and runs off down the road.

"Coitus Interruptus" is quite apt considering you can see the old Caritas Francis Hsu College building next door - Caritas being a Catholic organisation that runs schools and health facilities here.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Davis Street, Kennedy Town

Following the shooting at the restaurant, Little Sha (Frankie Chan) chases one of the kids down Hau Wo Street where he is promptly, and rather graphically, well-and-truly run over by a car. If anyone reading this lives at The Merton, this is what the street looked like before it was built. The tram is turning into Davis Street from Catchick Street.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Star Seafood Restaurant, Tai Wai Road

The establishing shots for the restaurant where the hit on Ng takes place was filmed in Tai Wai. As you can see from the image it was called 海福酒樓 (hoi fuk tsau lau). I think this was the real name rather than a name used for the film, but I could be wrong. Anyway, this same venue is now a "Ming Sing" seafood restaurant (aka Star Seafood). The filmmakers used some hoarding (top image, left hand side) to hide the fact that this street is a bit more modern than the 1960s-era they are trying to portray. This part of the film is one where the film strays quite far from Ng's real life. In the film, he is shot by some hired kids and a bullet hits his leg, causing his "limp". In reality, he was attacked in a punishment/warning attack and his leg was deliberately targeted with a large teak pole.The attack shattered and splintered his leg bones in several places and left him with a permanent disability.

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.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Nam Sang Wai, Yuen Long

Ng falls for Tse Yuen-yin (Cecilia Yip) and ingratiates himself with her kids to get closer to her. In the story, she lives in a stilt house on a pond somewhere. I can't find the exact location unfortunately, but I am certain this was filmed in Nam Sang Wai. Sadly it's another place increasingly affected by redevelopment and many of the former ponds have already been filled in for redevelopment.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Jordan Valley Resettlement Estate, Jordan Valley

In reality, Ng was a prolific drug dealer in the Shek Kip Mei resettlement estate, selling drugs via a network of mobile carts selling noodles. However, I think by 1991 (when the film was made) much of the old estate had already been changed and some of the older blocks had already been replaced by taller ones. As a more authentic-looking stand-in, the film crew were able to use the soon-to-be emptied Jordan Valley Resettlement Estate for the "Shek Kip Mei" fight scene as Ng takes out his main competitor, Gold Teeth Ping (Ng Man-tat).

The estate was emptied in two stages in 1991 and 1996 and the area has since been turned into a small park and public swimming pool. However, some of the infrastructure seen in the film remains including the Jordan Valley River nullah and the main road that curved into the estate (first image).

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - Hong Kong Adventist College, Clearwater Bay

In the next scene, Ng has been caught crossing the border with his friends and is in police custody. If you have ever watched The Freedom Swimmers episode of the Alan Whicker show, then you will know that was standard protocol for many years.

In reality though, the location used for the police station was the Hong Kong Adventist College in Clearwater Bay. This is the main entrance and stairway of the 1939-built college building.

To Be Number One - Ray Lui (1991) - St Peter's Church, The Mariner's Club

Next up is To Be Number One, a romanticised/glorified version of the story of Limpy Ho, one of Hong Kong's most notorious drug lords. The story follows Limpy Ho (Ng Ho-sik - played by Ray Lui) from his beginnings escaping the Communist-fuelled famine in the Mainland, and his rise up through the ranks and power of the Hong Kong triad gangs as he peddled opium and heroine from noodle carts in Shek Kip Mei.

Ray Lui chews up the scenery and even appears to be emulating Marlon Brando's "Godfather" as later in the film it looks like he has stuffed his cheeks with cotton wool to appear fatter. The film was obviously made before the real Ho passed away from cancer in 1991 because the end credits state that he was released in 1995 (in reality he had already had his sentence reduced and was living in supervised hospital care for the remainder of his life).

The opening scene shows Ho (Lui with dyed-grey hair) in his later years as he attends a church service and then looks back on his life. These scenes themselves are now part of their own history because the real-life chapel where this was shot was St Peter's Church located in the recently-demolished old Mariner's Club. The church was deconsecrated in 2018 and the building handed over to the developers in 2020. It has since been replaced by a monstrosity at least three times taller than the original building.