Hong Kong Signs: Pawn Shop
Photo by lazybone cafe
Spend some time walking the streets of Hong Kong and you’ll notice a peculiar neon sign over and over again. It looks vaguely like a shuttlecock heading straight for the ground.
Turns out it’s the standard sign for pawn shops, which, in Hong Kong, are nothing at all like their North American counterparts. They are most often found in older neighbourhoods, usually at the base of a walkup apartment building. Apparently, Hong Kong pawnbrokers act only as money lenders, holding your property as collateral; if you don’t pay up on time, it’s sold to vendors at one of the city’s many flea markets. Inside, the counters are so high that you must reach up above your head to offer whatever belongings you want to exchange for cash.
So what about the sign? According to the Wikipedia entry on pawnbrokers, in which Hong Kong warrants its own section, it is meant to represent a “bat holding a coin,” the bat symbolizing fortune and the coin representing benefits. But its origins are kind of incidental: the pawn shop sign is so distinctive that it is instantly recognizable wherever you go.
Tags: Signage
URBANPHOTO » Shish Taouk and the Happy Tooth says:
[...] too long ago I wrote about the standard bat-shaped neon sign used by Hong Kong pawnshops. Well, Montreal has its own ubiquitous neon symbols, what I like to call Shish Taouk and the Happy [...]
October 24th, 2007 at 6:00 am
hong kong tour says:
I’ve been in hong kong island and found some of this signs, there are more of this signs in mongkok
March 24th, 2008 at 6:57 pm