A shrine to old Hong Kong rises in Lung Wah Hotel

HONG KONG – In its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, the Lung Wah Hotel, a converted Spanish revival villa, offered a leafy refuge from the bustle of city life, near a cove and surrounded by parks in Hong Kong’s New Territories.

Winding stairs flanked by red lanterns led to a sprawling Chinese-style garden. On summer weekends, people gathered for games of mahjong under a pavilion as children played nearby in sandboxes and on swings. Movies were once shot there, and action star Bruce Lee, its most famous patron, practised martial arts on its roof.

In the decades since, the hotel stopped renting out rooms because new fire codes would require them to be upgraded. The surrounding rice fields were developed into middle-class housing.

The restaurant is still turning out its famed roast pigeon, but it has struggled to fill its wood-trimmed dining rooms since its 500-spot carpark was requisitioned for a new police station in the 1970s.

Now, the operation has been given a chance for a new lease on life – by leaning into the past. An unused teahouse on the property has been remade into Hong Kong Radiance, a hands-on museum that seeks to recreate slices of the vibrant life in the city as it transitioned from a post-war factory town producing clothes, electronics and plastics into a glittering financial centre connecting the East and West.

Mr John Wu, a graphic designer and well-known local collector who curated the space, wanted it to resemble a film set, where each corner has a cohesive palette.

His goal, he said, was to revive memories for older visitors, while also inspiring younger generations. When giving tours, he often calls attention to unique details, encouraging visitors to feel the sturdiness of the wood, for example.

“Only then can these objects get a second life,” he said.

Dusty antique shops have long been a fixture in the city, but a new crop of businesses – photo studios, restaurants and vintage-inspired shops, many run by Gen Z and millennial proprietors – are trying to hold fast to the aesthetics and everyday objects from a more recent past, before the British returned the former colony to Chinese control in 1997.

Many residents regard the 1980s as a golden era for Hong Kong culture, when locally made movies, television shows and music known as Cantopop, sung in Cantonese, were hugely popular at home and abroad.

The success of its entertainment scene was a point of pride, tied to the city’s identity as cosmopolitan and a place of opportunity for those with dreams as well as the guts and wits to pursue them. But imports from China, South Korea and Japan have led to the fading of Hong Kong’s pop culture in the decades since.

The wave of nostalgia has coincided with efforts by the Chinese government to redefine Hong Kong’s identity in the wake of protracted anti-government protests, which led to a crackdown by Beijing in 2020 and the imposition of a national security law.

Since then, the authorities have revamped history museums and rewritten textbooks to adhere to Beijing’s official narrative.

“Our generation has fantasies about the past,” said Ms Connie Li, a 30-year-old interior designer who visited the museum on a recent afternoon. “Things are changing too quickly, but in these spaces, we can find an escape in the so-called glory days and search for our roots.”

To tap public interest in the recent past, the city’s tourism board organised an exhibit tied to the 2024 hit Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In, a martial arts action movie set in 1980s Hong Kong. Visitors immersed themselves in the film’s “aesthetic vibe”, including a barbershop, tea stall and bone-setting clinic.

At Hong Kong Radiance, guests are free to rummage through dressers full of knick-knacks, games and family photo albums. It includes a herbalist’s office flanked by antique scrolls, and a convenience store with a retro jukebox, crates full of soda bottles and vintage ice cream tubs.

One room recreates a cluttered working-class home with a mahjong table, a Singer sewing machine and a bunk bed piled with suitcases.

Mr Wu, 55, began collecting Japanese and Western objects when he was young, but has in recent years focused on Hong Kong designs because he believes they reflect the city’s unique history and character.

He is known for his collection of designs by Henry Steiner, an Austrian whose work defined some of Hong Kong’s best-known brands, like the HSBC logo.

In 2023, Mr Wu teamed up with two other enthusiasts he met online – Mr Pan Tse, a maintenance worker, and Mr Tiger Ng, a logistics worker with a passion for scavenging abandoned lots – to help elderly residents move out of an old housing estate slated to be torn down.

The men were allowed to keep furniture and mementos from about 30 households in their own storage units, promising to one day show them to the public. They tried to find space in an industrial building to set up a mini-museum, but rents were high.

News of their volunteer work spread and, in 2024, the owner of the hotel, Ms Mary Chung, reached out for help sorting through the bulky recording equipment, instruments and books that had piled up at the property.

As it was a short drive from the academic institution that became the Chinese University of Hong Kong, it often sublet rooms to people teaching there, including martial arts writer Jin Yong.

Built in the 1930s, it was her family’s vacation home until the Japanese army requisitioned it during World War II. The Chungs converted it into a small hotel in 1951, with fewer than a dozen rooms.

There were poetry readings and live music, even a recording studio that was used by Cantonese opera singers. Movie crews were allowed to film there – with the proviso that the actors also checked in. Lee stayed during the shooting of his 1972 blockbuster, Fist Of Fury.

But business waned as the area developed into a densely populated suburb, losing its rural character. Access became more difficult after the government took over adjacent land for an electric railway.

The hotel ceased operating in 1985, but the restaurant kept going with mostly local customers, the dining rooms decorated with black-and-white photos of stars and show-business posters. During the Covid-19 pandemic, it almost folded, and Ms Chung was forced to reduce its 200 employees to a handful.

In 2024, she reached a deal with Mr Wu’s group, which spent months clearing the teahouse, moving its clutter into other rooms in the hotel. Cars could not stop outside the hotel, so they corralled their friends and family for help lugging boxes across footbridges and up the winding steps.

Since it opened last fall, Hong Kong Radiance has become a popular field-trip destination for schools and senior groups alike.

On a recent day, dozens of silver-haired visitors took turns at the mahjong table, slamming the tiles on the hardwood table with relish. Some strolled the grounds, reminiscing about visits in their youth, when the restaurant charged only HK$4 for a plate of its signature pigeon. Some even broke into Cantonese opera as they recalled live performances.

Always on the lookout for new ways to attract visitors, Ms Chung has considered displaying more of the hotel’s old items in the garden’s teahouse, near cages holding three peacocks.

“Lung Wah is part of Hong Kong’s collective memory,” she said. NYTIMES

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