The neon signs, jutted out on the streets and covering all Hong Kong with vivid colors, are gradually disappearing. The main reason of it is keeping community safety. Actually the billboards has been not legal both now and then in Hong Kong, which means, many of them has not followed their guidelines and there had happened many incidents due to falls by accident.
Mass billboards culture is unique characteristics of East Asia. In Japan also we can see such scenes in several places even now and probably you can easily recall Namba’s one. For us the billboards are sort of symbolic thing of previous era’s capitalism and that’s why they had been increasing along with capital developing regardless of our sense of beauty towards city scape, yet rather, it might be more exact to say our sense of beauty couldn’t catch up with the speed of development and as well our sense allowed them. Anyway originally neon signs or billboards hadn’t been considered as good things especially recently.
However at the same time, I recalled some kind of nostalgia when I saw the neon signs in Hong Kong. They were for sure not good in close up, but rather familiar from the distance for me and I suppose Western people describe to see them as exotic and oriental.
In near future is Hong Kong going same way of Japan and will neon signs be only seen in a few specific places preserved for tourists?
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