Photo from Pascal Greco’s Hong Kong Neon
LOCAL
Where did the lights go Apple Lee meets the people who are fighting to preserve Hong Kong’s fast-disappearing neon lights Kenji Lee Kun-lun, the executive director and chief executive officer of Tsui Wah Group, stood outside his cha chaan teng on Parkes Street in Jordan as he watched the removal of his restaurant’s main neon sign. It took a team of more than 10 workers and two large tractors to keep the nearly nine metres-tall sign suspended while it was being detached from the building. Before the sign was lowered to the ground, the neon lights were switched on, which bursted into dazzling hues of contrasting colours, in a symbolic move to pay tribute to the sign’s cultural significance. The removal and preservation of the Tsui Wah neon sign was the first major project that Tetra Neon Exchange (TNX) took on. Born out of a reaction to the city’s fast-disappearing neon signs, TNX is a newly founded non-profit
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organisation that aims to preserve Hong Kong’s neon culture. The group hopes to salvage neon signs of the city and display them at exhibitions to encourage more people to learn about this iconic Hong Kong artefact. Instead of heading to the landfill, the decades-old Tsui Wah neon sign is now safely tucked away in a storage space, waiting to be restored by a local neon signmaker. “Neon lights are the visual and cultural identity of Hong Kong. Growing up in the 80s, I was surrounded by countless neon signs when I strolled down the streets of Yau Ma Tei, Mong Kok and Tsim Sha Tsui,” says Cardin Chan, general manager of TNX. In the last two decades, up to 90 percent of Hong Kong’s neon signs have disappeared. The decline of the city’s neon lights can be traced back to the late 1990s when LED technology arrived on the scene. Compared to neon, LED is cheaper to produce, more energy efficient and easier to maintain. At around the same time, many neon companies also started relocating to mainland China where the rent and labour cost were cheaper. In 2011, a new government regulation concerning outdoor structures around buildings came into existence. The control system mandates business owners to remove signs that pose public safety risks. Since then, the
