HK's Past Is Disappearing, One Icon at a Time

From Golden Harvest's exit to the closure of Metropol restaurant, the city's rapid changes are fuelling a pushback.

- Magdalene Fung

There is always something to be sad about in Hong Kong these days.

This is the thought that strikes me ever so often as I track the city's developments.

This past week, it was the announced imminent closure of Metropol Restaurant, a 35-year-old traditional dim sum house in Admiralty, that triggered an outpouring of anguish. Many saw it as the latest casualty of Hong Kong's struggling economy and the pressures facing beloved long-time businesses.

Earlier in July, it was the total exit of cinema giant Golden Harvest, after over 50 years of operating movie theatres in Hong Kong, that was met with dismay, following the box office's poorest performance in 13 years amid increasingly unaffordable commercial rents.

So far in 2025, Hong Kongers have also lamented government requirements to phase out use of the city's iconic bamboo scaffolding in building construction; a move to demolish one of its first housing estates in Choi Hung; and a plan to resettle rural villagers and replace their farms with a high-tech business and housing hub known as the Northern Metropolis.

Such stories have become common as Hong Kong undergoes rapid transformation in the face of economic headwinds and ambitious urban planning. Each announcement tends to spark a now-familiar cycle: waves of sorrow and indignation, heated online debate, and citizen-led efforts to resist the changes.

"The Hong Kong we once knew is gone" is now a mournful refrain heard in discussions about the territory, media headlines and narratives of the city.

Hong Kong has always been evolving. But the visible losses in its physical landscape — from the city's iconic hanging neon street signs to its bamboo scaffolds and traditional dai pai dong open-air street food stalls — serve as emotional proxies for deeper invisible disruptions: political, demographic, and social.

TIDES OF CHANGE