My friend Vanessa posted this map on Facebook last week. I liked it so much, I asked if I could steal it from her. And of course she said yes. (She’s a treasure chest full of Hong Kong memorabilia!)
Notice the water buffalo up in the New Territories. That’s where I lived for five years, but can only remember seeing one water buffalo that whole time, up closer to the China border. Even my mom and her family remember the water buffalo from their trips to Hong Kong in the 60s.
And then there’s the bikini-clad woman on the bottom right. I went to the beach in that area at Shek O, but also further west at Repulse Bay.
On the weekends, my friends and I hopped onto the #6 bus to Stanley and pretended we were at some posh European riviera as we wound our way through the mountain and along the sea, surrounded by people speaking a number of romance languages. (And now that I’m living in comfy America, I daydream of being back in Hong Kong. You can never win.)
In the bottom left corner of the map, a pair of dice marks Macau. Even back then, Macau was known for its high-stakes casinos.
Below the dice, Vanessa pointed out the woman dressed in some type of traditional clothing. At first I thought it was Chinese peasant clothing, but now she looks more European to me.
Besides the dice and the bikini woman, Vanessa reckons nothing else on the map represents this part of Asia as it stands today.
hahaha – i guess the giant squid or octupii and the crustaceans still around too!! the temple in shatin is still there but was never that colour, a kind of purply haze. i love this map too 😉
I think today’s map would be overshadowed by our neighbors to the north!! All those skyscrapers, factories, cars!
Not entirely true… that pagoda still stands in Yuen Long, and you can still find water buffalo in the NT and on Lantau. They wander wild now. But no rickshaw pullers, and the surrounding seas have certainly been over-fished in the intervening decades.
Thanks! The Temple of 10,000 Buddhas is still in Shatin, right?
Apologies to Vanessa. I re-read her comment just now and she meant the clothing represented on the map is all outdated except for the bikini. Sorry!