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Special feature

Neon Signs in Cold War Hong Kong: Between Language Politics and Visual Hybridisation

Ge Song
p. 19-30

Abstract

Today, neon signs have mostly disappeared in Hong Kong. Yet, throughout the second half of the twentieth century, Hong Kong’s neon signs were powerful representations of the city’s blended history and multilingual encounters after World War II. In splendid colours and various shapes, neon signs negotiated different cultural streams, promoted cultural diversity, and fostered local identities. From 1949 to 1978, when the borders between the Eastern and Western Blocs were heavily fortified, Hong Kong served as a gateway to China, where significant China–Western convergences took place within the city. Using digital archives to examine the hybridity and fluidity of neon signs in 1960s and 1970s Hong Kong, this article argues that neon signs serve as a platform where diverse cultural trends are combined and reinvented. First, I provide a chronological narrative of neon signs and show how they reflect the sociocultural tensions of Cold War Hong Kong. Second, by contextualising the neon signs against the unique historical period, I explore the interplay of languages, colours, and designs of neon signs that shaped Hong Kong as a liminal space in the bipolar system. I argue that, in linguistic and aesthetic terms, neon signs are symbols of Hong Kong as a Cold War city. Linguistic, aesthetic, and cross-cultural spaces constituted Hong Kong’s translational spaces, which witnessed the city’s gradual evolution from a culturally hybridised city into a cosmopolitan one.

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Editor’s notes

Manuscript received on 27 September 2024. Accepted on 10 March 2025.

Excerpt

Full text document will be published online on March 2026.

Outline

Introduction
The growth and blossoming of neon signs in Cold War Hong Kong
Research methods
Language politics and Cold War dynamics
Visual hybridisation and Cold War aesthetics
Neon cosmopolitanism

First lines

Introduction

During the second half of the twentieth century, Hong Kong’s neon signs held significant meaning, representing the city’s rich history and encounters with different languages and cultures (Kwok 2018a). The streets were filled with thousands of glowing signs for restaurants, nightclubs, pharmacies, and pawn shops. These signs extended horizontally into the streets, competing for space and creating a soft, luminous atmosphere at night. For decades, the appearance of Hong Kong was shaped by these handmade signs, which, to a large extent, signified the progress and energy of the city (Ribbat and Anthony 2013), leading to Hong Kong’s reputation as a “neon city” (Macgregor and Price 2002) and the Pearl of the Orient” (Kwok 2018b: 73). Once unimaginable, the absence of neon signs in Hong Kong has become a stark reality today. Since the 2000s, the relentless redevelopment of old neighbourhoods, stricter government regulations, and the widespread adoption of LED advertisements ...

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References

Bibliographical reference

Ge Song, Neon Signs in Cold War Hong Kong: Between Language Politics and Visual HybridisationChina Perspectives, 140 | 2025, 19-30.

Electronic reference

Ge Song, Neon Signs in Cold War Hong Kong: Between Language Politics and Visual HybridisationChina Perspectives [Online], 140 | 2025, Online since 01 March 2026, connection on 18 April 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/17811; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/13ptd

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About the author

Ge Song

Ge Song is Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Modern Language Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong, B4-1/F-19, 10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong (gsong@eduhk.hk; gsong1@LN.hk).

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Copyright

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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