Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - 180 Nam Shan San Tsuen Road, Sai Kung

Here's one that I should have done years ago but I only recently realised it was a location I already knew about. I uploaded the Yellowthread Street series to Youtube a while back (see here) and noticed that one episode, The Red Pole, had been blocked due to music copyright. Anyway, after a rewatch (and edit) I realised that the house where the final attack by the triad takes place is a house we have come across a couple of times on the blog before. It's the large Spanish villa that was seen in both Forced Vengeance, where it is the house of Josh's employer, and in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story where it stands in for 41 Cumberland Road.

In this episode of Yellowthread Street, we see a bit more of the interior, especially the downstairs, compared to the exterior.

If you click through on the Forced Vengeance post you'll notice some interesting comments. One of which appears to be from the current owner/occupier of the house who mentions the swimming pool (under construction during the filming of Forced Vengeance) has been turned into a fish pond. However, I have no idea who lived there when all this stuff was filmed. Perhaps someone related to Salon Films?

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) - Playing Field Road, Mongkok

Moving onto episode 9: The Red Pole, we get a brief glimpse of that, sadly, rare beast in Hong Kong: the corner shophouse. I know of only four current remaining examples (and one of those is also about to go) and sadly the following one isn't one of them.

We see Mark McGann (who played Brady) crossing the road next to Mongkok Police station and behind him, on the corner of Playing Field Road and Sai Yeung Choi Street North, is a great example of this old and increasingly rare type of HK architecture.

As mentioned, sadly this building no longer exists and for those who don't live in HK this is a good example of how redevelopment here works. If you look at the following Streetview grab of the same corner, you can see the remnants of the old joists that joined the building on to its neighbour. Both buildings on the left and right are still there, but the best looking one (and most likely due to the fact that it was low rise) has been replaced by a new generic - but taller and more "rent-efficient" - building called the Capricorn Centre (built 1995).