Quotes & Sayings About Hong Kong

At thirteen, when I arrived in Hong Kong after leaving China, I made a living by working in a restaurant. — Martin Yan

In Hong Kong, particularly, we craft this art for decades. The action choreographer actually is the action director. He takes over and he choreographs with - by himself or with his team, and place the camera where he feels cinematic effect to bring out that choreography. — Donnie Yen

Making money, it seems, is all about the velocity of moving it around, so that it can exist in Hong Kong one moment and Wall Street a split second later. — Richard Dooling

Ten years before Matrix, ten years before Crouching Tiger - I wanted to do a Hong Kong action movie. — Robert Mark Kamen

I put together an iPhone app called TrimIt and released that in July 2011. About a month later, the private fund of the Hong Kong billionaire Li-Kashing cold emailed me and expressed an interest to invest, but they didn't realize I was 15. They thought it was a U.K. company with a team. — Nick D'Aloisio

When I hit the bong
I'm Godzilla takin' over Hong Kong
Eatin' wonton with a shotgun in long johns. — Redman

I confess I didn't read the 'Green Arrow' comics before coming to play Shado. The comic books are not as easily accessible in Hong Kong as they are in the States. I do enjoy superhero fiction, though. — Celina Jade

What is gained by debt relief and aid can be lost if we don't get a proper trade agreement in Hong Kong, — Gordon Brown

Hong Kong has plenty of superlative hotels, amazing food, and cool shopping. — Hanya Yanagihara

The clown was an evil one. They're either good or bad, and this one was definitely the latter. — Chris Thrall

Hong Kong is a wonderful, mixed-up town where you've got great food and adventure. First and foremost, it's a great place to experience China in a relatively accessible way. — Anthony Bourdain

Give Hong Kong to an Artist. He can use it. It can be poetised. — Baris Gencel

I went to Hong Kong in '97 to witness the handover after graduating university, and then I was gonna backpack around Asia and then come back here and look for a job. — Daniel Wu

For 'Around the World in 80 Plates' we got to travel all over, having what was like a cross between a culinary competition and races. And in each country we had a chef Ambassador. We went to London, Barcelona, Bologna, Hong Kong, Thailand, Morocco ... It was amazing. — Curtis Stone

When you're shooting that fast end to end, you wake up in a hotel and you don't know where you are. You're dreaming of Singapore, you wake up in Hong Kong. Or you just lose track. [It's] one of the reasons I'm staying in hotels that I know I've stayed in before, and they don't look like other hotels. — Anthony Bourdain

A good choreographer is one that's going to collaborate, teach, guide - everything. The wonderful thing on 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' was that we had Philip Kwok - he choreographed John Woo's 'Hard Boiled,' and in the '70s, he was a martial arts actor, stunt man, fighter, choreographer in Hong Kong. — Mark Dacascos

You will miss out on some near soul mates. This goes for friendships, too. There will be unforgettable people with whom you have shared an excellent evening or a few days. Now they live in Hong Kong, and you will never see them again. That's just how life is. — Pamela Druckerman

Regardless of how successful the Fifth Generation and New Taiwan cinemas have been in the international film milieu, this (limited) recognition usually is based on two aspects: the formal or the exotic. Their works are praised as highly formally innovative (in other words, how well the have mastered the new-wave visual language of the West -- thus, our modernist language) or exotic (as revealing the mystery of an inscrutable Other). This may explain why in the United States, mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan cinemas are still perceived as a homogeneous entity called Chinese cinema, though they are products of the vastly different cultures of three geopolitically segregated regions. — Tonglin Lu

Tiananmen Square in early 1989 attracted many dreamers like Ma Jian, who returned from Hong Kong to a one-room shack in Beijing in order to join the student protests. — Pankaj Mishra

The majority of Taiwan people cannot accept Taiwan becoming a second Hong Kong, nor can we accept Taiwan becoming a local government of the People's Republic of China or a Special Administrative Region of China. — Chen Shui-bian

Sound economic fundamentals coupled with a number of positive factors have partially offset the psychological impact of rising interest rates in Hong Kong. — Li Ka-shing

Be realistic and truthful - and tell Hong Kong businessmen honestly that they should go for long-term investments since it is unlikely money can be made in the short haul. — Zhu Rongji

I see Baccarat in major gateway cities like Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong and exotic resort locations. — Barry Sternlicht

Altogether, if I had to pick one place to hang out anywhere, from New York to Cape Town and Australia to Hong Kong, a bookstore would be it. — Gloria Steinem

My films are never about what Hong Kong is like, or anything approaching a realistic portrait, but what I think about Hong Kong and what I want it to be. — Wong Kar-Wai

Now, I don't think I'm a stupid guy. I'm just an average guy who does
stupid things. — Chris Thrall

Hong Kong film audiences are very quiet. It's their culture. — Jet Li

After I finished high school I went to Hong Kong and Thailand and spent some time there. Just to get that whole experience of being out of the bubble that I was in from high school in Vancouver, to be able to travel around and be on your own was an amazing experience. — Shay Mitchell

Failure to deliver a deal in Hong Kong is just not acceptable, ... There must be an intensification of the efforts. — Trevor Manuel

If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. — Jackie Chan

After the Tiananmen Massacre, I felt compelled not only to continue writing but to actively resist the restrictions placed on freedom of speech. I set up the publishing company in Hong Kong, with offices in Shenzhen in mainland China, and managed to publish works of fiction, philosophy, and politics by unapproved authors. — Ma Jian

humans are like Hong Kong knockoffs of angels, in that we have a divine spark in us, but sometimes it goes dim when Cinemax "After Dark" is on. — Anonymous

The Mayor of Hong Kong, who said Can't work today. Have American flu. Never got a dinner! — Red Buttons

If overpopulation or lack of resources created poverty, then Hong Kong should be poor. Hong Kong has 20 times as many people per square mile as India, and no valuable natural resources. Yet Hong Kong is rich; the average income there is higher than in Great Britain or Canada. This is a recent development. In the 1920s, Hong Kong was as poor as India. But in a relatively short time it became rich because of one key ingredient: economic freedom. — John Stossel

English is my second language, but in Hong Kong, they don't know that I'm from China. They think I'm from Hollywood because all the films they see are from here. China and Hong Kong are very different places, but they're starting to merge. Still the culture is very different. — Bai Ling

Maybe your college professor taught that the legacy of colonialism explains Third World poverty. That's nonsense as well. Canada was a colony. So were Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. In fact, the richest country in the world, the United States, was once a colony. By contrast, Ethiopia, Liberia, Tibet, Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan were never colonies, but they are home to the world's poorest people. — Walter Williams

Why was I still traveling? Was it purely because it was better than turning around and going home, where I would have to make grown-up choices about my future? Or was I waiting to happen across a place that would tell me to stay? — Pete Spurrier

Hong Kong has created one of the most successful societies on Earth. — Prince Charles

While I was writing 'Stick Out Your Tongue' in Beijing, the police began knocking on my door again. As soon as I finished the book, I moved to Hong Kong so that I could work undisturbed on my next novel. — Ma Jian

I remember vividly one distinct memory of arriving in Hong Kong and being the only blonde haired girl in this sea of international students, and thinking, 'Oh, my God. There's no hiding here.' — Adelaide Clemens

As a concept, free-trade zones are as old as commerce itself, and were all the more relevant in ancient times when the transportation of goods required multiple holdovers and rest stops. Pre-Roman Empire city-states, including Tyre, Carthage and Utica, encouraged trade by declaring themselves "free cities," where goods in transit could be stored without tax, and merchants would be protected from harm. These tax-free areas developed further economic significance during colonial times, when entire cities- including Hong Kong, Singapore and Gibraltar - were designated as "free ports" from which the loot of colonialism could be safely shipped back to England, Europe or America with low import tariffs. Today, the globe is dotted with variations on these tax-free pockets, from duty-free shops in airports and free banking zones of the Cayman Islands to bonded warehouses and ports where goods in transit are held, sorted and packaged. — Naomi Klein

When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there. — Paul Theroux

In Hong Kong there is agglomeration beyond my fondest imaginings. The Kowloon district claims a population density four times that of New York City. — P. J. O'Rourke

I have no definable history before I was abandoned and taken in by the orphanage in Hong Kong. I truly am a blank sheet. I have been disconnected from my ancestors. I don't know who they are, where they came from or whether any of their line still exists. The ancestral umbilical cord that would have connected me to my past and linked me to my future, was permanently severed. It cannot be reattached — Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen

Increasingly, the real estate developers can't get bank loans for their project financing in China. They're now going into the Hong Kong market to raise money in the bond market at very, very high rates, as high as 15, 20 percent. — James Chanos

How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn't want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying NO DOGS OR CHINESE, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behavior, when you think about it. And we accuse them of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early twenty-first century and forcing the White House to legalize heroin. And saying, Don't worry, we'll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we're at it, okay? Thanks very much. — David Mitchell

My wife once said that one of her great ambitions was to walk down the streets of Hong Kong with her children. So we all went to Asia on one occasion. Then she said she'd like to walk down the streets of Jerusalem with her children. So we arranged our family finances and all went to Jerusalem. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Despite her confidence, there had been occasions when she had been ready to submit her will to his. It had been she who had suggested that he should live at The Keep but he returned only when he was certain that her own strength was too well developed to be open to his influence. It had been neither too early nor too late and they had had seven years of quiet happiness. It had been this happiness which he had been reluctant to disturb by pursuing his suspicions about Fliss's sudden decision to marry Miles. Well, it was too late now. Fliss would go to Hong Kong and have — Marcia Willett

Thank you, but I have never had a large capacity for grief. I prefer looking ahead to looking back. Swimming to Hong Kong limited my soul as well as my body. So trying new things, even at my age, holds no fear for me. I suspect you have the same spirit of independence and adventure. — Ian Hamilton

Even during the promotion I told people that I didn't like Rush Hour. The jokes I didn't understand and the fighting, compared to my Hong Kong films was terrible. A lot of people didn't like it. But mostly people did like it, they really liked it. Rush Hour really brought me to the American family audience. — Jackie Chan

Shooting in Hong Kong, you can do whatever you want, even change the script every day. In Hollywood, you have to have a lot of meetings. — Andrew Lau

What I miss from the States, I guess, is going to museums and to see small rock shows in small bars. We don't have that in Hong Kong. Unfortunately because the property market is so high, all rent is so expensive, they can't afford to have a rock music bar because those things don't make a lot of money, and they're paying a lot of rent. — Daniel Wu

How a peaceful, uncrowded place with ample wherewithal stays poor is hard to explain. How a conflict-ridden, grossly over-populated place with no resources whatsoever gets rich is simple. The British colonial government turned Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing. — P. J. O'Rourke

It was such an idyllic time when I grew up in Hong Kong. It was a British colony and very much geared towards buying the best of Britain. My childhood does have a huge influence on how we design. There must be a little bit of that nostalgia - childhood is so special. — Marie-Chantal Claire

Hong Kong girls have a genius sense of style. I came back to the States thinking no one here has any individuality. Or cute enough socks. — Camilla Belle

The problem with a lot of Chinese is that they put up divisions between Taiwanese, Hong Kong natives, mainlanders. We are never united. I really hope that the Chinese can be more united. — Martin Yan

As we open the gates to Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, we know that millions of guests will open their hearts to this fantasy world where characters and stories spring to life, where dreams come true and where families will have fun together. — Jay Rasulo

In Hong Kong, I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera", in which the hero must wait until his seventies before being united with his beloved. In a moment of Melancholy, I inscribed my copy: Angelina, I will love you always. Adam and sent it to her, via Jacinta. It was an unhealthy book for me to have read at that time, and to have then inflicted on Angelina. Just wait long enough and somehow the right people will die. The starts will align, we'll get over ourselves and we'll be together. And in the meantime, what? — Graeme Simsion

You can leave Hong Kong, but it will never leave you. — Nury Vittachi

If achieving the Hong Kong dream becomes a vanishing hope, then our society will suffer. What would the Hong Kong dream be? It's no different from the American dream, whereby an everyday man on the street who works hard would be able to make good savings and use those savings as equity for their future small business. — Richard Li

Under the Convention of Chuenpi, signed in January 1841 (but then repudiated by the Emperor), Hong Kong became a British possession. — Niall Ferguson

My mother has a very big family in Shanghai, so I have, like, almost 40 cousins, so we stayed together all the time. So by the time I get to Hong Kong, I become the only child and the only one surrounded by adults, you know. — Wong Kar-Wai

That's so different in Hong Kong when I'm using my own mother language, I can treat the line in one thousand different ways, with many different reactions. — Chow Yun-Fat

Part of the Hong Kong style is the fact that a lot of the performers can perform the moves, and we don't over-rehearse this stuff. — Daniel Wu

Political activists in Hong Kong and Taiwan use Facebook as their primary tool to mobilize support for their causes and activities. — Rebecca MacKinnon

CROUCHING TIGER is nevertheless a gloriously big epic, starring the Hong Kong action stars Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh in a visionary adventure where the characters seem set free from the force of gravity. — Roger Ebert

I've been able to go so many places. I had the opportunity to go to Hong Kong when I was thirteen years old which is crazy. I lived there for three months. It was amazing. I couldn't ask for a more enriched life so far. — Dakota Fanning

i am someone who wants very much to be popular. I don't just want you to like me, I want to be one of the most joy-inducing human beings that you've ever encountered. I want to explode on your night sky like fireworks at midnight on New Year's Eve in Hong Kong. — Carrie Fisher

Most Americans have a sense of what the blues is. But in Hong Kong, they have no sense of the blues. — Jess Row

My mind is like the streets of Hong Kong. — Jaclyn Moriarty

I was a regular on 'Holby City,' and I did daytime; that's how I started off. Off in Hong Kong doing stuntman stuff, then coming back to England doing daytime soap operas. — Scott Adkins

In a sense, Britain inadvertently, through its actions in Hong Kong, did more to reduce world poverty than all the aid programs that we've undertaken in the last century, — Paul Romer

'These boat people,' says the government of Hong Kong, 'they all want to go to America.' Well, I swear I don't know why, do you? I mean, take Vietnam. Why would any Vietnamese come to America after what American did to Vietnam? Don't they remember My Lai, napalm, Sylvester Stallone? — Linda Ellerbee

The life expectancy in Hong Kong is among the highest in the world ... you can come to only one conclusion: we have the most environmentally friendly place for people, for executives, for Hong Kong people to live — Donald Tsang

We had been busy building up fibre infrastructure under the ground in Hong Kong and underneath the homes of people, so when we launched IPTV, it was relatively smoother sailing than in other territories. — Richard Li

Affluence isn't affluence at all. Hong Kong is the benchmark; everybody else's affluence is mere tat. Until you've experienced that perfume-washed air as polarized glass doors embrace you into a luxury hotel's plush interior, you've only had a dud replica of the real thing. — Jonathan Gash

He puffed out his pigeon chest and waddled across the room towards me. With his feet pointing outwards, he looked like a fat duck with a grievance. — Chris Thrall

Princeton has made an enormous difference in my life, and I am delighted to be able to express my gratitude in such a tangible way. The generosity of earlier generations of donors made it possible for me to attend Princeton as a young student from Hong Kong, and I have always wanted to do all I could to assure that students in the future.. from the United States and around the world.. will have the same kinds of opportunities I had to learn from faculty members who are leaders in their fields at a university that remains second to none in its commitment to teaching. — Gordon Wu

Hong Kong is the supermarket of Asia. — Eleanor Coppola

I really feel that Hong Kong is my home, and Hong Kong is my identity as an actor. — Daniel Wu

Quality Healthcare is a premier healthcare brand in Hong Kong and is the leading private healthcare provider there. We are believers in long-term growth prospects of the Asian healthcare space and the benefits of a world-class pan-Asian integrated healthcare delivery system. — Malvinder Mohan Singh

Some marriages are made in heaven,
Mine was made in Hong Kong, by the same people who make those little rubber pork chops they sell in the pet department at Kmart. — Tom Robbins

When I lived in Hong Kong, I felt that Hong Kong is my family. — Jet Li

The widely mis-interpreted 1998 'meltdown' of East Asia was a financial symptom of the renewed reality: In fact, it was the first round the world recession again to begin in East Asia and spread from there to the West, instead of vice versa. That marked the beginnings of the return back 360 degrees around the world of the world economic center to Asia where it had always been before those two eighty-year period of temporary Western ascendance. The stock market crash in Hong Kong and the devaluation of the Thai baht and the Indonesian rupia took only 80 seconds to make themselves felt in the London City and on New York's Wall Street. How much of a cultural lag do we still need for popular perception and social theory to catch up with global reality? — Andre Gunder Frank

Each piece that I put in the street is unique. I never make the same piece twice. For Hong Kong, like for every city where I have worked, I try to adapt my work to the culture and the 'colors' of the city. — Invader

I've never been invited to do an exhibition or do a talk in England, except once, about 10 years ago. I've given talks all across Canada, many in the United States, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan - but not England. — Brian Wildsmith

The imaginary child implied by the toys on exhibit in Hong Kong was impossible to reconcile with my actual child. I didn't think I'd like to meet the imaginary child they implied. That child was mad with contradictions. He was a machine-gun-toting, Chopin-playing psychopath with a sugar high and a short attention span. — Donovan Hohn

And I managed to arrange to get some research support and to stay in Hong Kong for another year and a half, interviewing people coming out of China, both Westerners and Chinese. And that was my first real research study on thought reform or so-called brainwashing. — Robert Jay Lifton

My first break was in a Hong Kong movie that I shot in China - I was going out there and working as a western stunt man, if you like, but at the same time in England I was working in daytime soap stuff. Eventually I put the two together. — Scott Adkins

I was born in Cambridge but brought up in and around Winchester, in Hampshire. I've also lived in Hong Kong and America. — Chris Geere

Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and retro clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

It does not matter whether I am in Hong Kong or Sao Paolo - people always want to talk about toxic bosses and what to do about them. — Srikumar Rao

It's not rocket science. Hong Kong has 95% tax compliance, because it's code is only 4 pages long with a 15% flat tax. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

You have an impeccable argument if you said that Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo are food capitals. They have a maximum amount of great stuff to eat in the smallest areas. — Anthony Bourdain

I thought I should forget Hollywood and go back to Hong Kong. I'm so lucky that finally Hollywood accepts my comedy fighting. — Jackie Chan

pull a string, a puppet moves ...

each man must realize
that it can all disappear very
quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the
room; all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand --
and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha ...
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware crashing to the
kitchen floor, your girl will enter
and you'll be standing, drunk,
in the center of it and she'll ask:
my god, what's the matter?
and you'll answer: I don't know,
I don't know ... — Charles Bukowski

Although Shanghai is on the sea, it long lacked the prosperity that Hong Kong enjoyed, so while Hong Kong became known for its exotic ocean creatures, Shanghai built its diet around more commonplace river and sea fish. — Evan Osnos

An image began to form in her mind. There were streets, narrow and crowded with people and vehicles. Above them flashed neon lights and blinking billboards of every colour, shape and size. Some ran up the sides of buildings, others blinked on and off in store windows. In the space above the sidewalk, higher than a double-decker bus, hung flashing neon signs in bright pink, yellow, red, blue, orange, green and white. Yes, if white could be whiter than white, it was when it was in neon, Hong Mei thought. She knew Nathan Road in Kowloon was famous for its neon lights. Were these streets of Kowloon that she was seeing it her head? — B.L. Sauder

The only reason Toronto is no longer the dullest city on earth is that it is no longer full of Anglo-Canadians. It is full of Hong Kong Chinese. And not a few Italians. — Joel Garreau

We got to jump on, like, trampolines, learn flips, learn karate, kung fu, Hong Kong street fighting. — Jaime King