Out with the old in Hong Kong’s Hollywood Road as the antiques trade falls on hard times
It’s a place where merchants have sold artefacts since the start of the colonial era in 1841, but rising rents and changing tastes have taken their toll
Walking down the western tip of Hollywood Road is a step back into a Hong Kong that has long since been replaced by gleaming skyscrapers and high-end restaurants. It is home to an array of eclectic antiques shops that each contribute their own unique colour to the vibrant tapestry of the street.
Items on sale range from Maoist memorabilia to Chinese dynastic antiques, Tibetan rugs and even seemingly out-of-place Western antiques. Visitors can peruse the alleyway stalls with their random collections of trinkets, or fork out money for authentic fare in the shops.
Hollywood Road is the second oldest street in Hong Kong, built at the founding of the colony in 1841. It arose as a place where foreign traders and merchants would sell artefacts they “collected” in mainland China before making their way towards Europe. Another surge in antique ware came after the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, when Chinese Communist Party cadres sold their antiques on Hollywood Road to make the money needed for industrialisation and economic reform.
“There used to be a lot of antiques illegally taken out of China when the country first opened up in the 1980s, but these days most of the so-called antiques sold are replicas or non-antiques [vintage items] dating back to no more than the early Republican period,” said Dr Lee Ho-yin, associate professor and head of the division of architectural conservation at the University of Hong Kong.
At its height in the 1980s, the stretch of Hollywood Road was home to over 100 antique shops, but 40 years later, only a handful remain.
