A Cause to Kill - Ivy Ling Po (1969) - Tai Hang Tung Road, Shek Kip Mei

After picking up the briefcase from the hotel, the taxi takes Hsin Li further north and drops her off on Tai Hang Tung Road, just north of Boundary Street. She alights right next to a set of steps that lead up into Yau Yat Tsuen. This area has actually changed relatvely little. The only big change is the redevelopment of the Tai Hang Tung Estate in the background. The estate still exists bit with more modern blocks replacing the old H-shape ones you can see here. Long time readers may remember that this very same road appears in Narazumono here. And I also did a modern day comparison here. This scene is actually filmed a little further to the south, opposite the petrol stations that still exists.

The steps lead up to Marigold Road in Yau Yat Tsuen and are mainly used by students at the adjacent Yau Yat Chuen school (note: Tsuen and Chuen are pronounced the same way and are just two ways of writing the same word. Cantonese sadly never underwent a uniform romanisation in the same way that Mandarin did with Pinyin and is one of the reasons why Hong Kong place/road names are all over the place in terms of spelling).

Tai Hang Tung Estate

Shell still has a garage here

Tai Hang Tung Recreation Ground in the background

Tai Hang Tung Road - Now and Then

I took this one last year before my extended trip to the UK and simply forgot I had it. The Then image is taken from 1964's Narazumono, starring Ken Takakura. You can see my original post from 2 years ago here. The scene is a bit disjointed because the two characters in the shot, on rickshaws, have just descended from Victoria Peak on the tram and then the next moment they are all the way up in Sham Shui Po District (as it is now) and on Tai Hang Tung Road next to the old resettlement estate.

The old estate was similar in design to the nearby Shek Kip Mei Estate, so it's common to get confused between the two if you are not familiar with the area. They were built around teh same time following the 1953 Shek Kip Mei fire. The old estate was knocked down in the early 80s and rebuilt into the slightly larger buildings you can see today.

Funnily enough, until just a few years ago, the red-checked building of the Concordia Lutheran School (see in the background of the movie still) was still around and has only recently been replaced with a brand new modern building.

In an update to this post, I also noticed that A Cause to Kill - a Shaw movie from 1969 - also filmed along this street albeit a little further to the south (behind the camera). So here is a similar view from that film and my poor attempt to recreate it below.

Narazumono - Ken Takakura (1964) - Tai Hang Tung Road, Shek Kip Mei

After disembarking from the Peak Tram, the next shot shows our plotting couple riding rickshaws alongside one of the old resettlement estates. This scene was filmed way up in the north part of Kowloon along Tai Hang Tung Road - in fact not very far from this earlier view along Boundary Street. The resettlement blocks seen on the left were from the original Tai hang Tung estate. The building with the red squares on it is the original Concordia Lutheran School. The school has a history page on its website and the fourth image down you can see a close up of the same view seen below.

Weiße Fracht für Hongkong - Dietmar Schönherr (1963) - Tai Hang Tung Estate, Kowloon

In one scene with Dietmar Schönherr and Brad Harris going for a wander, it appears that they manage to cover the whole territory in just a few short seconds. The walk starts off next to one of the H blocks of what was part of the Tai Hang Tung Estate. I initially believed this to be Shek Kip Mei Estate, but the orientation of the building relative to the view tells me otherwise.

In terms of modern location, this block was Block 8 and was located at the junction of Tai Hang Tung Road and Wo Chai Street. There is a square building here now (it's still part of the modern version of the Tai Hang Tung Estate) with a restaurant inside called the Lucky Dragon Restaurant (彩龍大酒樓).

That's the ridge line between Beacon Hill and Lion Rock up there in the background. The squatter village on the hillside is where the Nam Shan Estate now stands.