The Heart of Victoria City

Yet another day of photography and lumbering around Hong Kong (Central, to be specific) with the big red bag of kit. The results vary and no doubt they shall make their presence known on the blog in due course.

We ran afoul of more than one security guard (three in total). The one in the picture above was rather intent that we didn't take photographs by the HSBC building. Others objected to our clambering all over the Legco Building (it occurs to me now that we're almost using the low-budget version of the V'n'A) and another didn't like us standing next to the grass.

Steampunk steals many cues from Victoriana and in theory lingering about the city that shares her name should bring about many photo opportunities, but few things in Hong Kong are sacrosanct, including Antiquities. Murray House was moved brick by brick to make way for the knife-like Bank of China tower. (All three thousand blocks of it sat in a box somewhere for almost nineteen years before it was finally decided that it should be resurrected in Stanley. One can almost imagine the conversations of baffled bureaucrats.)

Needless to say, other buildings were significantly less lucky.

Central, the pulsing heart of the Victoria City (no, no one uses that name anymore, but the blog is still trying to keep up the pretence of Steampunk-y-ness), is veritably festooned in Christmas ornaments and trying to dodge them with the photography proved a something of a challenge. There seems to be a plethora  of oversized Christmas tree baubles. (We're theorising some sort of mass hallucination on the part of the exterior designers everywhere. Or some central design conceit that the entirety of Hong Kong is one enormous Christmas Tree with the nightly laser shows as the fairy lights and the Mainland some sort of overly heavy star. All in all, it's an analogy that doesn't work.)

Passers-by in Central are significantly less charitable to errant photographers and generally less skilled in dodging out of shot. Perhaps we should have revelled in the incongruity of it all, but part of me feels like that's just cheating. So here comes the promise of more photos to be posted soon and fewer digressions into the history and landscape of Hong Kong.

Season's Greetings, of course, from the Costume Mercenary. Regardless of whether or not I could be at all located in that shot.