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In his warehouse workshop, Wu Chi-kai, one of Hong Kong’s few remaining neon craftsmen, has for decades bent glass tubes into one of the most instantly recognisable symbols of the Chinese territory — brightly coloured signs.
In neon’s late 20th-century heyday, he and some 30 other master craftsmen made signs for pawn shops, mah jong parlours, bridal stores and restaurants. Metres-high, they dominated streets and visually defined Hong Kong for both residents and a generation of movie goers.
In recent years, neon has faded from the city’s streets. Wu, in the trade for almost four decades, is one of just eight craftsmen keeping the technique alive as they cater to a new generation of customers as well as those nostalgic for an earlier era.
Across the territory, many businesses have switched to less fragile and sometimes cheaper technologies such as LED. Add to that tight enforcement by local authorities of rules on unauthorised and unsafe signs — the buildings department said 1,119 removal orders for signs including neon were issued in 2022 alone — and there are far fewer neon signs on Hong Kong streets than there used to be.
“I grew up in Hong Kong in the 80s and 90s; whenever I took a stroll, I was greeted by the sea of neon. It radiated a sense of belonging or home,” said Cardin Chan, a conservationist who works for the charity Tetra Neon Exchange. “Businesses had to fight to be seen.” She described signs so close “they could shake hands with each other”.
In a city that has witnessed huge upheaval in recent years, including a tough crackdown on pro-democracy protesters and greater control by Beijing, the signs hark back to an earlier, more freewheeling era.
For Chan, neon is a reminder of her youth. “Brightness equals prosperity,” she said, recalling a childhood in which she says even during the oil crisis, the lights had to be kept on. “You could see how important brightness was to Hong Kong to give a [positive] impression to outsiders,” she said. For others, she acknowledges, the nostalgia for neon can be something more. “It is sentimental, you can’t avoid it especially with the changes of the past few years,” said Chan. The calligraphy, metal work and installation all speak to an era when Hong Kong was dominated by cottage industries.
Neon signs are such a part of street life that people “feel upset when they disappear . . . What you see is what you feel,” said Brian Kwok, associate professor of the School of Design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Movies such as Fallen Angels, directed by Wong Kar Wai and set in Hong Kong, cemented the links between the city and neon. The easiest way to convey a message about Hong Kong [in a movie] was to “put a neon sign in the backdrop,” Kwok said.
He and Chan are among those keen to preserve that sense of history. Kwok and others have documented neon signs for a photography project. Chan stores dozens of old neon signs as part of her work for Tetra Neon Exchange. An exhibition last year attracted tens of thousands of visitors, she said.
For Master Wu, there is still demand for neon, but while some traditional businesses are committed to their old signs, his customer base has broadened. He shows me pictures on his phone of a white neon Christmas tree he made for a hotel lobby. It took him a month to make it, he said. In his workshop is a sign he made for the Hong Kong Tourism Board. Neon is increasingly popular for interiors, he said, particularly the famed Hong Kong pawnshop sign — bat shaped — that to many signifies the city. “People like neon as a gift,” he said.
Showing the cachet that neon still holds, he restored some of the older signs — stored by Chan in her yard — for one of the city’s most glamorous events of recent weeks, an after-party for the Louis Vuitton menswear autumn collection.
At the Rosewood hotel, partygoers were greeted with a neon LV sign, as well as the pawnshop and restaurant signs repaired by Wu. It was nice to see neon acknowledged as “an integral part of Hong Kong visual culture”, said Chan. For Wu, this is recognition of both the art form and the craftsmanship. A well-made sign, he tells me, can last several years. For Wu, nothing beats the “satisfaction of doing a challenging piece”.
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