Gen Y Cops - Edison Chen (2000) - Yiu Lian Dockyard, Tsing Yi

The cargo depot scenes were at least partially, if not wholly, shot at the Yiu Lian Dockyard on the south west side of Tsing Yi Island.

Hafen der Düfte - Veronica Ferres (2013) - Stonecutters Bridge

As Victoria makes her way from the airport into town we are treated to a view of the Stonecutters Bridge connecting West Kowloon with Tsing Yi Island. It's a view we come back to later in the film as well. The dark edge at the bottom of image 3 indicates that the cameraman was most likely positioned looking out from a floor of the Goodman Interlink building, next to the bridge.

The Medallion - Jackie Chan (2003) - Tsing Yi, New Territories

There's a helicopter sequence that starts off flying over the Ma Wan Channel with Tsing Yi Island at the bottom and the unmistakable shape of the Tsing Ma Bridge below.

Push - Chris Evans (2009) - Lantau Link Visitors Centre, Tsing Yi

Kira makes her bid for escape in the toilet at the Lantau Link Visitors Centre. I've not actually been here yet, its location is very much biased towards people with cars (the only public bus service is an hourly green minibus - limited to 16 seats - caught from Maritime Square) but will make the effort at some point to see what is on show. Until then we will have to make do with some screen grabs from Push. I must admit to being most curious about whether or not these are the real toilets at the centre.

Ting Kau Bridge in the background

Cracker: White Ghost - Robbie Coltrane (1996) - Tsing Yi Container Processing Terminal, Tsing Yi

The container terminal where Dennis imprisons his girlfriend is one we have seen before a couple of times on this blog, first in The Protector where it was used for the finale and secondly in Double Impact where one version of JCVD gets his butt kicked.

Actually, there are a few container yards here and the sign at the front gate (on Tsing Keung Street - see top picture below) shows that the space is shared by several companies. The place was looking a bit empty in Double Impact but it seems as though business was booming once again when the Cracker team turned up.

These days the place is just marked as "dockyard" and "open storage" on maps but I think it is still very much in use. The Exxon Mobil Oil Terminal seen in the lower two pictures is also still around and operational. Tsing Yi Road can be seen on the left of the lower picture as it curves around the southern part of the island.

Cracker: White Ghost - Robbie Coltrane (1996) - Tsing Ma Bridge, Lantau Link

In the mid-90's the construction work for the new airport was still underway and part of that, of course, involved the Lantau Link - a road link connecting north Lantau Island with the Kowloon and New Territories mainland. Crucial to that link is the bridge section between Tsing Yi Island and Ma Wan Island - so crucial in fact that when a badly piloted ship hit the bridge a few months ago, the resulting 3 hour closure caused absolute chaos with flights at the airport being missed etc. It's hard to believe that in almost 20 years of operation the bridge is still the only way to access to airport by vehicle although apparently there is now  tunnel being bored from Tuen Mun.

Anyway, here is a quick shot of the bridge whilst still under construction. The view looks like it is from the Ma Wan side of the strait looking towards Tsing Yi.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Tsuen Wan Chinese Permanent Cemetery, Tsuen Wan

The final scene from the whole Yellowthread Street series was shot at the Tsuen Wan Chinese Permanent Cemetery. We've seen it before on this blog because the film makers behind Contagion also used it as the location for the ransom exchange.

Riviera Gardens behind Chan and Lonnen (brand new at the time)

As you can imagine the cemetery itself hasn't really changed at all, but the background has seen extensive development. The lower picture shows Tsing Yi in the background. The southern end of it (on the left) has now become completely taken over by reclamation for Container Terminal 9 - this is the same area where the famous QE wreck was.

The bridge at the back is the original Tsing Yi Bridge - the first bridge to connect the mainland with Tsing Yi Island. It has since been doubled (another bridge built parallel and used for Kowloon-bound traffic) to ease the burden on the original which opened in the mid-70's. It has also been complemented by a closer bridge called the Cheung Tsing Bridge and in the far distance connecting the southern end of Tsing Yi to West Kowloon is the newly built Stonecutters Bridge (remember that since this show was made Stonecutters Island has been joined on to Kowloon via reclamation).

The chimney at the left is the old Kwai Chung Incinerator chimney. It closed in 1997 but the chimney stayed up for another 10 years while they cleaned the surrounding land up of the various poisons that had built up over the years.

Yellowthread Street (TV Series) - Bruce Payne (1990) - Cheung Hang Estate, Tsing Yi

Moving on to Episode 11: Slicing the Dragon and we start off with some aerial night views of the under-construction Cheung hang Estate on Tsing Yi Island. The timing of the show was perhaps nearer to 1989 (I mean in terms of filming) because the estate was already completed and taking in tenants by 1990. Anyway, the story revolves around some Fung Shui skulduggery - something that seems to never go away in Hong Kong.

These two buildings above are Hang Yip and Hang Chi House, looking as though they are just being freed of their bamboo scaffolding. There are two rectangular sections of ground, one larger and one smaller that are in fact covered reservoirs - a common occurrence in Hong Kong - and the building site beyond it is the future location of the neighbouring Cheung Wang Estate.

As the camera moves to the south you can also see Hang Lai House centre picture and the corner of Hang Chui House to its left.

Contagion - Matt Damon (2011) - Tsing Ma Bridge, Tsing Yi

An easy spot this one and probably familiar to anyone who has visited Hong Kong since 1998 will have passed over this bridge at least once.

Judging by the angle, it seems as though the filmmakers pulled in some favours and actually managed to get the camera up onto one of the uprights of the bridge.

Here is a similar angle I took from the Tsing Yi Nature Trail a couple of years ago. It's pretty high from up there but I think confirms that the filmmakers did in fact make it up the actual bridge (or perhaps used a drone). Anyway, an impressive view from either angle.

Double Impact - Jean Claude Van Damme (1991) - Tsing Yi Container Processing Terminal, Tsing Yi

Yes, that's right, the same place I just posted used in the finale of The Protector was also used 5 years later for a scene in Double Impact when JCVD is taken by the gang boss to a deserted area and promptly beaten up inside a container by Yang Sze (aka Bolo).

I had been wondering where this place was for a while although I already knew it was the same location for both films, but have finally seen some clues on screen that link Tsing Yi with this place.

This was a toughy, but the combination of the yellow derrick, the raised appearance of the area and the nearby slopes, as well as the glimpse of the NW corner of Lantau Island in the background mean that this area is the upper storage level of the container processing terminal along Tsing Keung Street on the west side of Tsing Yi.

Of course, as I mentioned in the The Protector post, this whole area has changed significantly with much of the cargo processing moving to the Kwai Chung side of Tsing Yi as well as the creation of the Lantau Link (i.e. Tsing Ma Bridge et al) which now occupies much of the skyline in the background.

The Protector - Jackie Chan (1985) - Tsing Yi Container Processing Terminal, Tsing Yi

These days most of the container business is concentrated on the SE side of Tsing Yi, but back in 1985 when this film was made, this site on the western side of the island, was a much busier place.

The container terminal is the setting for the film's finale where we see some naked women (hooray!), a fight with Bill "Superfoot" Wallace (double hooray!), and Danny Aiello blow up a sniper with a bazooka (triple hooray!!!).

We start with a view across the dockyard towards the northern part of Tsing Yi. The road on the right is Tsing Keung Street. The site is split into two parts, the lower part along the shoreline is the processing area and the upper part, seen in the foreground, serves as a container storage area. It's in the storage area that the baddies are supposed to have their drug labs (staffed by naked ladies for some bizarre reason that only James Glickenhaus can explain...or not). Actually, this whole view below is now dominated by the Tsing Ma bridge spanning from Tsing Yi to Ma Wan Island (that's the bit of land behind the derrick's upper part).

In the shot below we have Danny Aiello getting a jolly good eyeballing of the dockyard from the vantage point of the nearby hillside. The yellow derrick you can see seems to still be around, but whether its the same one we can see here is hard to say - the site seems to have had multiple derricks at various points, but is now down to one - perhaps a reflection of the fact that a large proportion of container traffic now goes elsewhere?

Anyway, in the shot below if you look carefully you will see a small island centre-left at the top. This is Tang Lung Chau and is a small rocky islet off the coast of Ma Wan Island.

The Man with the Golden Gun - Roger Moore (1974) - R.M.S Queen Elizabeth, Hong Kong Harbour

When I did a locations thread for this film on Gwulo a while ago, this was by far the most interesting one - mainly because no one knew where it had finally sunk. Anyway, the guys on there got their resourceful hats on, as always and finally nailed it as being a part of the sea off Stonecutters Island that now sits under a bit of reclaimed land.

Of course everyone who has seen the film knows this location served as the covert HQ of Bond's boss in HK but, in reality, it was the old Queen Elizabeth ship that had been bought by the shipping magnate C.Y Tung (the father of HK's first lame duck Chief Executive - Tung Chee Hwa - the first of many I suspect). He bought the ship and was in the process of turning it into a floating university (called the S.S Seawise - C.Y's...geddit?) when it caught fire under mysterious circumstances in January 1972 and was burnt to the rusty hulk you see on film.

The main part of the superstructure that was above water was broken down and (I believe) was used to form some of the ground on which Chek Lap Kok airport now stands whereas the remaining part remained on the seabed until the area known as CT9 was built over it (CT stands for Container Terminal) at the SE tip of Tsing Yi island (the new Stonecutters Bridge virtually passes over the top of the area now).