Choi Hung Estate

Where it sits. Choi Hung Estate stands in Ngau Chi Wan, in eastern Kowloon, boxed in by four major roads: Lung Cheung Road to the north, Prince Edward Road East to the south, the Kwun Tong Bypass to the west and Clear Water Bay Road to the east. Its name means rainbow estate, and the eleven residential blocks are painted in graduated bands of pale colour — mint, lemon, peach, sky — that run horizontally across each floor. The image that made it internationally recognisable is a single vantage point: the rooftop of the estate's multi-storey car park, where two full-size basketball courts and a football pitch sit on the deck, framed against the coloured towers rising immediately behind.

Built for a housing crisis. The government granted the land to the Housing Authority in 1958, at the height of a refugee-driven housing emergency that had left hundreds of thousands of people in squatter settlements on the Kowloon hillsides. The blocks were completed between 1962 and 1964, and the opening ceremony was held in 1963 with the Governor, Sir Robert Black, presiding; a commemorative signboard still stands on Lam Chung Avenue inside the estate. It accommodated close to 43,000 people, making it the largest public housing estate in Hong Kong at the time, and it was treated as a showpiece of what the colonial administration could deliver. Visiting dignitaries were routinely brought here: Richard Nixon in 1964, five years before he became president of the United States, Princess Margaret in 1966 and Princess Alexandra in 1967. The design won a Silver Medal at the Hong Kong Institute of Architects annual awards in 1965 — an unusual honour for public housing, and a reminder that the colour scheme and the raised deck were deliberate architectural decisions rather than incidental.

On screen and in the feed. Choi Hung's fame is photographic rather than cinematic, and it is worth stating that plainly rather than inventing film credits for it. Since the mid-2010s the car-park roof has become one of the most photographed spots in Hong Kong, feeding an endless supply of social media images, fashion shoots, music videos and travel commissioning. The composition is almost always identical — a figure on the court, the coloured blocks filling the frame behind — and its repetition has become part of the story. Journalists and researchers in Hong Kong have criticised the phenomenon on two grounds: that it reduces sixty years of complex social history to a colour palette, and that it displaces residents from a sports facility built for them. Some residents now sell photographs to visitors; others have simply stopped using the courts at peak hours. Anyone photographing here is participating in that argument whether they intend to or not.

What you actually find. Beyond the roof deck, Choi Hung is an ordinary and well-loved estate: eleven blocks, two markets, five schools, a post office, a bus terminus and rows of ground-floor shops and cha chaan teng restaurants under the blocks. The 2016 by-census recorded a population of 18,435 — well down from the original figure as household sizes shrank — with a median age of 48 and a median household income of about HK$15,290 a month. Cantonese is spoken by ninety-three per cent of residents. The estate's age shows in the narrow lift lobbies, the exposed plumbing and the mature trees that have grown up between the blocks over six decades, and those trees are what makes the ground-level courtyards genuinely pleasant.

A closing window. In November 2023 it was reported that Choi Hung Estate had been earmarked for redevelopment, and in October 2024 a phased plan went to the Wong Tai Sin District Council. The first phase, taking down several blocks, the market and two former primary school buildings, is scheduled for 2028 to 2029, with residents moved to new blocks at Mei Tung Estate; subsequent phases run into the 2040s, and the whole programme is expected to complete around 2048 to 2049, raising the unit count to roughly 9,200. Which blocks survive longest, and whether the car-park deck and its courts survive at all, is not yet settled. The estate as it looks now has a finite life.

Getting there and timing. Choi Hung station on the Kwun Tong line sits at the estate's edge; exits C3 and C4 bring you out beside the car park, and the ramp or lift takes you to the roof deck. Early morning, before about eight, is the only reliable time to find the courts quiet, and the low side light then is better than the flat overhead light of midday. Weekend afternoons are the worst combination of visitors and residents wanting to play. Treat the courts as what they are — a neighbourhood facility — give way to anyone using them, and keep off the residential floors entirely. Ground level is step-free; the roof deck is reached by ramp and lift.