City of Victoria

Hong Kong is an indifferent guardian of its past, with old buildings too frequently torn down in favor of nondescript high-rises. But a new exhibit of historical photographs, "City of Victoria," offers a fascinating record of Hong Kong's history.

1999 April 18, Mark Landler, “WHAT'S DOING IN; Hong Kong”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 04 Sep 2009, Travel

In addition to non-stop demolition and construction, Hong Kong is constantly re-constructing and re-figuring its past. Another fictional work, Dung Kai-chung’s The Atlas: Archaeology of an Imaginary City (2011) echoes Calvino. In this novel, the “City of Victoria” (Hong Kong) no longer exists and narrators can only divine from old maps and atlases what it was like and how it changed during 156 years as a British colony because of rapid erection and demolition of the city’s physical structures. The Hong Kong its people know, according to the writer cannot be actually pinpointed on a map, the map being only a limited and artificial translation of the place.

2015 July 9, Jennifer Eagleton, “A work in progress: An imaginary and re-imagined Hong Kong”, in Hong Kong Free Press, archived from the original on 05 Jul 2025, Opinion