February 1st, 2012
In the middle of the 1980s, after lobbying from businesses and Chinese community leaders, a series of decorative gates were built to mark the various entrances to Montreal’s Chinatown. One of these is found at the corner of de la Gauchetière and Jeanne-Mance, the western end of the district. But to me, the real signal that I have entered Chinatown is when I pass beneath the Wing’s Nouilles Chinoises neon sign, one block east at Côté Street.
The Wing Building is the oldest surviving structure in Chinatown, built in 1826 and designed by James O’Donnell, who had moved to Montreal from New York to oversee the construction of a somewhat more illustrious project. Over the past 186 years, it has served as a military school, paper box factory and warehouse, according to Barry Lazar and Tamsin Douglas’ Guide to Ethnic Montreal. These days, the building is known for a distinctly eggy smell: this is the main supplier of fortune cookies to Chinese restaurants across eastern Canada.
The first time I came across Miss Villeray, she was looking a bit worse for the wear, holding fort above a neighbourhood bar that had seen better days. In 2008, the bar was sold to an ambitious entrepreneur who fixed it up without throwing away the original decor. It’s now a haunt for Villeray’s trendy thirtysomethings. Not my crowd, but I always appreciate the fact that Miss Villeray was restored to her former glory.
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August 30th, 2011
Yue Hwa in 2005. Photo by choco_late
The Yue Hwa Chinese Products department store has stood at the corner of Jordan and Nathan roads for decades — and for decades, so did its big neon sign, a sentinel that marked the passage north into the seedy streets of Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok.
Sometime in 2009, though, without fanfare or even the simplest of announcements, the sign was removed. So was a similar sign further down Nathan Road. Yue Hwa did not respond to inquiries about the signs’ fate. It is not clear why they were taken down or what happened to them.
Heritage activists were nonplussed about the sign’s disappearance. “We put our priority on conserving some historical buildings first due to limited resources,” says Roy Ng, policy officer at the Conservancy Association, which has fought to save numerous historic buildings from destruction.
Katty Law, a heritage activist who successfully lobbied against the redevelopment of the Central Market and Former Married Police Quarters, says she has “never thought about the issue, probably because many of us are upset with the light pollution problem.”
Although neon signs are some of the most characteristic elements of Hong Kong’s streetscape, there has been virtually no effort to research, document or preserve the city’s landmark them. In terms of heritage conservation, they simply aren’t on the radar.
“Neon signs are such a surprisingly under-researched subject,” says Lee Ho-yin, director of the University of Hong Kong’s Architectural Conservation Programme. “We see them every day and yet we don’t know much about them.”
With more and more businesses switching to cheaper, mass-produced forms of signage, neon is steadily disappearing from Hong Kong’s streets. The effect on Hong Kong’s visual identity could be profound. Neon is such an integral part of Hong Kong’s character that the mere mention of the city’s name conjures up images of glowing Chinese characters and streets bathed in a rainbow of light.
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February 20th, 2011
Strip clubs often have fabulously kitschy neon signs. In Hong Kong, all of those signs are conveniently located in one place: Lockhart Road, scene of the city’s most debauched nightlife. Strip clubs, hooker bars and other places of ill repute have existed here since World War II, when American soldiers landed at the nearby Wan Chai docks for rest, relaxation and possibly venereal disease. This is the part of town that inspired that paragon of Far East film clichés, The World of Suzie Wong.
Lockhart Road is as salacious as it ever was, though Suzie Wong has given way to women of Filipino and Thai origin. Clubs advertise cheap drinks in the hope of luring men who are then expected to spend lavishly on the women inside.
As the patronage of these bars skews white, male and anglophone, this is one of the few parts of Hong Kong where most neon signs are in English rather than Chinese. Though they blink frenetically and feature amusing names (Crazy Horse, Show Biz and so on), they aren’t quite as outlandish as you would expect, given the nature of the neighbourhood. (This is not Montreal after all; animated neon lap dances probably wouldn’t fly here. Hong Kong is permissive, but in a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of way.)
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November 8th, 2010
Hang Heung bakery, Yuen Long
Sixty years ago, when Yuen Long was still a country backwater, trapped between some scraggly hills to the south and a closed border to the north, two bakeries opened on its main street. Somehow, despite the odds, both of those bakeries became famous, spawning chains that now have locations all over Hong Kong.
One is Hang Heung, known for its wife cakes. Another, less than a block away, is Wing Wah, which made its name with mooncakes. As you might expect from a couple of bakeries in Hong Kong in the 1950s, each sought to distinguish itself with extravagant neon signs. Since then, Yuen Long has seen its population explode; far from being a backwater, is now perfectly positioned between Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
But the neon signs survive.
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September 29th, 2010
Miss Villeray by day…
Whenever I wander up to Villeray, usually after a trip to the Jean-Talon Market, I make sure to take Henri-Julien so that I can pass by Miss Villeray. That’s because this neighbourhood bar is adorned by a particularly comely neon sign. It wouldn’t have turned any heads in the 1960s, when this bar first opened and Montreal was filled with neon, but is now one of the last of a dying breed. Luckily, Miss Villeray was bought by a new owner in 2009 who restored many of the bar’s period details, including the sign.
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September 18th, 2009
Thunderstorm seen from the footbridge over Mong Kok Road
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April 14th, 2009
December 31st, 2008
December 22nd, 2008
1970s-era restaurant sign, Queen’s Road West, Sai Ying Pun
March 9th, 2008
Hong Kong often seems like a safety-obsessed city. Public service posters and announcements are ubiquitous: they warn people to hold onto the handrail when riding the escalator, to mind the closing doors on the subway, to make regular visits to the doctor. Sidewalks on busy streets are lined by fences to prevent people from tripping into the path of an oncoming bus. Restaurant patrons often wash their bowls and chopsticks in hot tea to ensure their cleanliness. Nobody drinks water straight from the tap, even though it is treated and, in theory, perfectly safe to consume. Instead they filter it, boil it—and only then do they drink it.
But then you see something like this and nobody seems fazed in the least. I was apparently the only person on the entire street who found it odd that a man was fixing a neon sign by leaning precariously out from a third-floor ledge, on a windy day no less, without so much as someone to spot him. As a Hong Konger might say, yau mo gau cho ah, which translates roughly as “WTF?”
March 5th, 2008
Johnston Road near Spring Garden Lane, Wan Chai, Hong Kong
October 24th, 2007
Not 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 Tooth.
The first sign is found on just about every Lebanese fast-food joint in town. Their menus are always identical — the usual array of shawarma, falafel, garlic potatoes and what Montrealers call shish taouk, but isn’t really shish taouk — so I guess their owners feel that having a standardized neon animation of a man slicing shawarma is appropriate for the same reason that every pharmacy in France is marked by the same green neon cross.
Montreal’s dentists must think the same thing: a neon tooth hangs outside nearly every dental clinic in the city. Unlike the shish taouk or pharmacy signs, though, these teeth aren’t always the same. Some are a simple green outline while others are more elaborate. Often enough, they anthropomorphize the tooth, fixing it with a creepy grin. In the example below, the tooth is posing quite happily with its friend the toothbrush, but a bit further down Park Avenue is another sign that features a tooth apparently walking away with a toothbrush in hand. “See you, sucker,” it seems to be saying.
You know, I sometimes have dreams about my teeth falling out. Signs like that are not something I need to see.
July 30th, 2007
Wing’s Chinese Noodles, owned by the venerable Lee family for half a century, is housed in a sturdy-looking warehouse built in 1826. All of the fortune cookies served in Montreal restaurants — bilingual and kosher, naturally — are made here. Every time I pass by, the sweet smell of fresh egg rolls lingers in the air and my stomach starts to grumble.
July 5th, 2007
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.
