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South China Morning Post
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
‘Global' Hong Kong mustn't lose sight of its own beauty
Hong Kong doesn't need to chase the sameness of Coldplay concerts and viral trends. It needs to be assured in its own taste This spring, In the Mood for Love is once again flickering on cinema screens in Hong Kong. More than two decades on, Wong Kar-wai's film has lost none of its glow. A meditation on time, restraint and unspoken desire, it quietly signals that Hong Kong once moved to a different rhythm. It is tempting to read this re-release as political, especially in a city where cultural memory has become a muted form of dissent. In truth, the film captures not the colonial past but the emotional present. What draws people to Wong's work is not nostalgia – rather, it's atmosphere, mood or the slow, deliberate pacing of life. Much of In the Mood for Love was filmed in Bangkok, a location chosen not for strict accuracy but for its ability to evoke a Hong Kong that no longer physically existed. That choice says everything: Wong is not archiving the past; he is conjuring up its emotional temperature and memories of fleeting spaces. With projects such as his television series Blossoms Shanghai and his curatorial work for the Prada restaurant in Shanghai, Wong continues to shape mood. Though set in the 1990s, Blossoms often evokes 1920s Shanghai through layered interiors and stained light. Wong insists that beauty does not belong in archives but in daily life: in stairwells, gestures and silence. For the director, Shanghai and Hong Kong are not just cinematic backdrops but emotional landscapes. Born in one city and raised in the other, he embodies haipai – Shanghai style – a cross-cultural current flowing between the two cities. His films trace a rhythm once shared by the cities, carried by migration, commerce and memory. Some of the world's most influential business empires, from China Merchants to Jardine Matheson, are not just headquartered in Hong Kong, they were born or remade here. Many would have begun as modest ventures in a city that offered rare opportunities for growth at the edge of empires. Maggie Cheung in a still from the 25th anniversary edition of In The Mood For Love. Photo: Jet Tone Production The city's commercial rise was never just the product of laissez-faire ideals. It was shaped by family businesses, trading houses and cross-border capital that found in Hong Kong a unique stage. In return, they shaped the city – how people dressed, ate and imagined their place in the world. Newsletter Daily Opinion By submitting, you consent to receiving marketing emails from SCMP. If you don't want these, tick here {{message}} Thanks for signing up for our newsletter! Please check your email to confirm your subscription. Follow us on Facebook to get our latest news. These firms could not have emerged the same way anywhere else. This is not to romanticise capital, but to recognise Hong Kong as a place of reinvention. Today, the critical question is not whether Hong Kong still matters, but whether its influence can shift from efficiency to authorship. If the hands that once shaped its commerce still define its skyline, perhaps they can also help restore a more deliberate kind of beauty. Not branding. Not nostalgia. Not luxury for its own sake, but a textured, intentional authenticity. Adrian Cheng's K11 represented one recent attempt at this, bringing art into retail before the market was ready. The timing was unfortunate. But the aspiration remains compelling: what if a city could feel again? Something seems to be shifting. The popularity of local films like The Last Dance and a renewed interest in tailoring and neon signs are no accident. They reflect a hunger for something more grounded. Global aesthetic slop, homogenised, packaged and served with algorithmic precision, is wearing thin. As conspicuous consumption evolves, catching a Coldplay concert has become social currency; that too says something about the city. Chris Martin at Coldplay's concert at the Kai Tak Stadium on April 9. Photo: Harvey Kong Hong Kong does not need to chase sameness. It needs to remember and be assured in its own taste, whether it's smoke curling up from incense coils at Man Mo Temple, chandeliers glittering at the Peninsula, or red plastic stools gleaming under fluorescent light. These are not trends, but texture – identity, even. And there are ways to carry them forward without flattening them into another viral design language. Hong Kong can still absorb global influences and express them in a vocabulary that feels local and lived in, as it once did. It shouldn't need to mimic the next trending aesthetic to matter. It should let its inheritance evolve into something alive. To return to Wong, the point is not to look back, but inwards, asking what kind of future knows how to feel deeply. Policy can support this shift. The aesthetic life is not a luxury but a civic resource. Private-public partnerships might seed a film archive in Sai Ying Pun or fund apprenticeships in Cantonese opera and letterpress. There could even be another Hong Kong-Shanghai cultural corridor – to give the next generation tools to see. Business once sculpted Hong Kong. It can set the city's cultural pulse racing again. Bring back the neon. Bring back the stories. Bring back the belief that living beautifully is still possible – not for old times' sake, but for a future that remembers how to see.
South China Morning Post
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
‘Global' Hong Kong mustn't lose sight of its own beauty
This spring, In the Mood for Love is once again flickering on cinema screens in Hong Kong. More than two decades on, Wong Kar-wai's film has lost none of its glow. A meditation on time, restraint and unspoken desire, it quietly signals that Hong Kong once moved to a different rhythm. Advertisement It is tempting to read this re-release as political, especially in a city where cultural memory has become a muted form of dissent. In truth, the film captures not the colonial past but the emotional present. What draws people to Wong's work is not nostalgia – rather, it's atmosphere, mood or the slow, deliberate pacing of life. Much of In the Mood for Love was filmed in Bangkok, a location chosen not for strict accuracy but for its ability to evoke a Hong Kong that no longer physically existed. That choice says everything: Wong is not archiving the past; he is conjuring up its emotional temperature and memories of fleeting spaces. With projects such as his television series Blossoms Shanghai and his curatorial work for the Prada restaurant in Shanghai, Wong continues to shape mood. Though set in the 1990s, Blossoms often evokes 1920s Shanghai through layered interiors and stained light. Wong insists that beauty does not belong in archives but in daily life: in stairwells, gestures and silence. For the director, Shanghai and Hong Kong are not just cinematic backdrops but emotional landscapes. Born in one city and raised in the other, he embodies haipai – Shanghai style – a cross-cultural current flowing between the two cities. His films trace a rhythm once shared by the cities, carried by migration, commerce and memory. Advertisement
