Where Bruce Lee practiced on the roof, a shrine to Old Hong Kong rises

HONG KONG >> In its heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, 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 northern 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 Bruce Lee, its most famous patron, practiced 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 parking lot 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 postwar factory town producing clothes, electronics and plastics into a glittering financial center connecting East and West.

John Wu, a graphic designer and well-known local collector who curated the space, said he wanted it to resemble a film set where each corner had a cohesive color 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 in an interview.

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 both 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 mainland China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan 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 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.”

At Hong Kong Radiance, guests are free to rummage through dressers full of knickknacks, games and family photo albums. It includes an 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 re-creates a cluttered working-class home with a mahjong table, a Singer sewing machine and a bunk bed piled with suitcases.

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

In 2023, Wu teamed up with two other enthusiasts he met online — Pan Tse, a maintenance worker, and Tiger Ng, a logistics worker with a passion for scavenging abandoned lots — to help elderly residents move out of an old housing estate that was 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 last year the owner of Lung Wah, Mary Chung, reached out for help sorting through the bulky recording equipment, instruments and books that had piled up at the property.

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 hotel in 1951 with fewer than a dozen rooms. 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.

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 1971 blockbuster, “The Big Boss,” aka “Fists of Fury.”

But business waned as the area developed into a densely populated suburb, losing its rural character.

The hotel ceased operating in 1985, but the restaurant kept going with mostly local customers.

Last year, Chung reached a deal with Wu’s group, which spent months clearing the teahouse, moving its clutter into other rooms in the hotel.

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 4 Hong Kong dollars (about 50 cents) for a plate of its signature pigeon (now $12). Some even broke into Cantonese opera as they recalled live performances.

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

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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