Queen's Road East - Now and Then

This attempt at a now/then comparison is using a still from Visa to Canton (1960) starring Richard Baseheart in one of several Hammer films featuring Hong Kong over the years (the others being Shatter and The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires).

For a wider version of the 1960 image - it's a stitch of several screen grabs from a panning shot - you can see my original post here.

Crossing Hennessy - Jacky Cheung (2010) - Wanchai Road, Wanchai

The area where Uncle Ching (Danny Lee) bumps into Loy's aunt is located at the junction of Wanchai Road and Cross Street. The fruit & veg stall, Luen Hop Hing, is still there according to the most recent Streetview (Feb 2024). The pair then walk along Wanchai Road, past the end of Cross Street.

Visa to Canton - Richard Basehart (1960) - Queen's Road East, Wanchai

I think the final image for this film will have to be this nice colour footage of Queen's Road East. The camera pans from left to right at the junction with Wanchai Road. If you look carefully you can just about see one of the streamline moderne "fins" of the Art Deco Wanchai Market building at the very right of the last frame. The market area, surrounded by those glorious painted wall adverts, is where block 2 of "The Zenith" now stands.

For those who would prefer a nicely stitched panorama of these three images, here is one for your viewing pleasure (click on it for a better view).

Push - Chris Evans (2009) - Wanchai Road, Wanchai

Before Kira is picked up by the sniffers, she is first followed around by them and one of the streets they go down is Wanchai Road in...Wanchai!

This was a toughy to pin down but I managed to guess the location courtesy of the "Lee Comic" sign that is visible in the right of the lower picture. You can vaguely make out the Chinese name for Wanchai Road if you look closely enough. Looking at Streetview below I have tried to recreate the angle in the first picture. This section of the road runs diagonally from SW to NE and this is looking towards the northern end.

Looking at the various tarpaulin awnings along the road, and assuming that these Streetview pictures are from 2010 (the last time they did a run through HK as far as I know) then I would say it didn't take long for them to turn from bright red to the dirty covered stuff you can see in the Streetview picture. It's a good example of HK's roadside pollution at work.

Anyway, this second Streetview picture shows view after swiveling about 180 degrees from the first one. The Lee Comic sign can be seen centre screen and gives an approximate position of where the camera crew must have stuck their camera.

Rush Hour 2 - Jackie Chan (2001) - Tai Wo Street, Wanchai

One of the standout set pieces of this film is the fight on the scaffolding where Chan prematurely proclaims the robustness of Chinese bamboo. The building on which all the action takes place is called Wanchai House (built 1959) and stands on the corner of Tai Wo Street and Wanchai Road.

Here are some recent images I took - coincidentally with scaffolding erected around the building.

Shatter - Stuart Whitman (1974) - Wanchai Road, Wanchai

Many thanks to Gweilo8888 for identifying the next location from my Shatter stragglers. I had asked on my help page if anyone could identify the hotel that Shatter (Stuart Whitman) stays at. On film it was identified as the Good World Hotel and I didn't know if it was a real establishment or not.

Well, it turns out it was real. I've posted Gweilo8888's comment below.

...The "Good World Hotel" is listed in a 1951 Chinese-language book indexed by Google as being at "62 Wan Chai Rd".

The same name also appears in the 1964-65 Hong Kong Trade Directory as being in Wan Chai, and although the formatting of the text snippet is wonky, it seems to list them at "62-78 Wan Chai Road". 

Looking at Centamap, there's a "62-76 Wan Chai Road", which is now the somewhat bizarrely-named Fully Building, occupied 12/1981. So my guess is that the Good World Hotel is a real place in Wan Chai, and was demolished for construction of the Fully Building about 5-6 years or so after Shatter was filmed.

The buildings across the street date back to 1951-1967, incidentally, so the view out the door in frame grab 16 should match one of them, although I really can't make out much in it myself.

I can't match the background either which leads me to think that the hotel entrance was slightly further up the street and opposite a new building (called "83Wanchai") that stands at 77 - 83 Wanchai Road.

Flatfoot in Hong Kong - Bud Spencer (1975) - Johnston Road junction with Fleming Road, Wanchai

A little after we saw Bud outside the Lung Moon, he hops on a pedicab and gives the poor driver a hard time by the mere fact that he is a fat bastard and weighs more than the poor dude can handle. Anyway, we next see the struggling pedicab still heading down Johnston Road but this time at the large intersection with Fleming Road. One thing I only just noticed is that you can partially see the sign for the old Ying King restaurant on the far right of the top image.

These shots are great because I can see that just in this small stretch of road there are still a lot of surrounding buildings that still stand. The first is from the top two shots and it stands on the corner of Johnston and Wanchai Road.

See, still there and being looked after, although the view to the mountains at the end of Wanchai Road is no longer clear and we now just get the side of a high rise rather than the green foliage that was there in 1975. As the camera pans left we can see a few buildings at the other side of the street (Johnston Road turns south here and these buildings are actually on part of Wanchai Road still). Here is the 2009 Streetview.

Well, you can see the square-windowed place (the Ming Tak Building) was still around in 2009 but I can confirm that not long after I originally made this post, it was demolished and redeveloped. Sometimes I feel this blog has a nasty knack of alerting developers to their next victim :-(.