If you're traveling to Hong Kong, don't just focus on shopping. Although it is a shopping paradise, it seems to be "once" today. The first memories of Hong Kong began with TVB, followed by film exposure in the 1980s and 1990s. So, no matter how many times I've been to Hong Kong, I can always find some light and shadow from the old times.
Hollywood Antique Street is one of my must-visit places, located in Hong Kong's Central to Sheung Wan, across the central and western districts of Hong Kong Island, at the foot of Victoria Peak, east from Yuncheng Street, west to Queen's Road West, can be described as a "historical street" that gathers the vicissitudes of Hong Kong Island for a hundred years, and its history can be traced back to 1844.
Hong Kong's antique streets are actually no different from all the antique markets in urban areas, fake everywhere, really, although there are, but basically I can't afford to buy them. The definition of the so-called antique is something that is some years old, as far as hundreds of years ago, as close as decades ago. In Hong Kong Antique Street, there are quite a lot of things in the 1980s and 1990s. Although at a glance, you know that it is much more fake, but some small and messy shops in front of some things will attract attention and evoke memories.
Hollywood Antique Street is the first street in Hong Kong in the colonial period, full of "畛畛轩" or "畛畛斋", you can judge the antique street, gathered to sell porcelain jade, jewelry, stone furniture, calligraphy and paintings, etc., the division of labor is meticulous and professional. Even the small sugar water shop looks quite ancient.
It was rated by foreign media as one of the "streets that must be walked once in a lifetime". Usually pay a hundred or dozens of dollars, you can also take a lot of "small antiques" home. Of course, sometimes thirty-four dollars can buy a pictorial with a sense of the times, which is much more meaningful than modern imitations, at least the feelings are sincere. But it's not the only antique street in Hong Kong, there are three antique streets in Hong Kong, of which Hollywood is the most famous.
These ancient streets, curved and long, stretch from Central to Sheung Wan and West Wan, more than 100 antique shops of all sizes display countless fine Chinese antiquities, and there are a wide variety of ceramics, jade, stone carvings, ivory carvings, bronzes, silverware, lacquerware, furniture, screens, calligraphy and paintings, ancient books, and rare ancient Chinese wedding costumes.
In addition, there are ancient electric fans from the West, phonographs, etc., as well as jewelry and silverware from Japan, Thailand and South Asia, antiques and antiques. Among them, ceramics, carvings and furniture are the most numerous.
In addition to the curious tourists who come and go in these streets every day, that is, foreigners, high-ancient ceramics and bronzes are favored in Europe, and it is said that in those old capitalist countries, the nobles' families do not collect Chinese high-ancient porcelain, and they are "discriminated against".
I remember when I was alive in Hollywood, I saw a white-haired and bespectacled foreigner sitting in front of a shop, although it was already afternoon, but there were not many tourists in Antique Street. He carefully selected the photos in his hand, and I wonder if he was going to sell them as antiques or what he got today in the antique street shop? I wanted to go over and talk to him for a few words, but gave up.
Antique Street is full of shops, and the most dangling from under my eyes are Buddha statue ceramics, followed by calligraphy and painting pictorial magazines and old photos. Of course, as large as Ming and Qing dynasty furniture, calligraphy scrolls, small copper coins, jade wrench snuff bottles are essential for Hollywood, but this feeling is like approaching a huge antique furniture store.
Of course, the antiques on the street are quite grounded, all placed at the door or on the ground, except for the slightly more magnificent façade in front of the door is mostly stone lions, but the window display is the Buddha statue stone carving is more.
Many times, I can't tell the real from the fake, but I like it from the bottom of my heart when I look at it. Unfortunately, I didn't have the capital to become an antique collector, and only when I traveled, I occasionally came back with something cheap but very much liked.
Fortunately, these things are true, but the years and months can not be compared with the Ming, Qing, Tang and Song dynasties, and the things of more than ten to decades are not uncommon for ordinary people to counterfeit, but now people do not need it, with better things to replace, the natural thing that is eliminated has become something to be remembered, and the right to collect feelings.
When walking on the antique street, due to the sparse number of tourists on the street, I was not in the bustling noise, I seemed to go back to the 70s and 80s of the last century, very strong. This rustic and pure atmosphere is probably the taste of old Hong Kong people's nostalgia. It just happened to be exactly what I was looking for.
The most pleasing thing to me in the street shops is the old photographs of pictorial magazines, and these yellowed and depreciated papers no longer seem to have any freshness to see. The time that has passed, how many stars have become a storm, and the entertainment gossip reported on the cover of the magazine has become a cliché. Many of the conditions of old Hong Kong are only preserved in the photos, and some photos have been copied one after another, and the continuous sale seems to be constantly retained. But strangely, there are unusually many magazines and pictorials about Bruce Lee, whether it is book photos or the appearance of him printed on some boxes, which makes many foreigners can't help but stop and reach out to take a look.
Even when the eleven- or twelve-year-old foreign boy saw it, he would exclaim to his father, "Bruce Lee! Bruce Lee！ Bruce Lee！ "It can be seen that Bruce Lee has become one of the most classic tastes of old Hong Kong in antique streets.
In fact, every city's antique street can find memories of the city's times, but not every antique street can be like Hollywood, completely making people walk in the last century. It's just that people sigh that the opportunity to find and the old things are alluded to a period of the past.
But Hollywood Antique Street has been rated as "a street that must be walked once in a lifetime", which must not only be a huge collection of antiques of old items, there are two old shops in the eastern section of Antique Street, although it does not sell old things, it is also an antique.
Eating rice and cane juice is the scene of old Hong Kong life, and the peeling walls of the shop are written with the vicissitudes of the years, just like the old things in the private shop, which can't help but touch people's imagination of old Hong Kong life. The old Hong Kong time recorded in the old photos in front of some shop stalls has made this imagination even more complete.
It is gratifying that there are too many places and corners in Hong Kong that still retain the taste of old Hong Kong. Although it is bustling, it is commercial, and the night view of Victoria Harbour says it all, but for tradition and culture, it still lives in the breath of old Hong Kong.