Avenue of Stars, Hong Kong

Where it sits. The Avenue of Stars runs for about 440 metres along the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbour, from Salisbury Garden eastwards past the New World Centre site. It is the eastern end of the promenade that begins at the Star Ferry pier and the old Clock Tower, and it faces directly across the water at the Central and Wan Chai skyline — which is the real reason it works. Everything on the landward side of the walkway is about Hong Kong cinema; everything on the seaward side is one of the most photographed urban views in Asia, and the two are meant to be read together.

Why it was built. The New World Group had laid out a waterfront promenade around its Tsim Sha Tsui East development in 1982. In 2004 the group announced it would spend forty million Hong Kong dollars turning part of it into a tribute to the local film industry, modelled openly on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with backing from the Tourism Board, the Tourism Commission, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department and the Hong Kong Film Awards Association. It opened to the public on 28 April 2004, and the privately funded avenue was handed over to the government as public property at the ceremony the previous day. Seventy-three inductees were honoured at opening, chosen by the Film Awards Association together with the readers of the magazine City Entertainment — a selection process that mattered, because it meant the first cohort reflected industry and audience opinion rather than a committee's alone.

What is actually on it. At the Salisbury Garden entrance stands a 4.5-metre replica of the statuette handed to Hong Kong Film Awards winners. Along the promenade, nine red pillars carry inscriptions telling the story of roughly a hundred years of Hong Kong cinema, from the earliest local productions through the Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest studio eras, the kung fu boom, the 1980s action cycle, the New Wave and after. Set into the paving are plaques honouring performers, directors and technicians; a minority carry handprints pressed into cement, because most honourees had already died by the time they were inducted, and their plaques carry names alone. The two statues are the fixed points: a 2.5-metre bronze of Bruce Lee in his Fist of Fury stance, unveiled in 2005 on the anniversary of his birth and paid for largely by public subscription, and a bronze of the singer and actress Anita Mui, added in 2014. Both are permanently surrounded by people taking photographs.

Closure and rebuild. After eleven years the management contract expired, and in August 2015 the government announced a joint redevelopment with the same company. Awarding the contract without tender, on the grounds that the project was non-profit, caused a public row: residents' groups and rival developers with adjacent property objected, the department maintained that district council consultation had been favourable, and the government eventually promised a public consultation to defuse it. The walkway was closed for three years, with a temporary version at the Tsim Sha Tsui East podium garden, and reopened on 31 January 2019 to a redesign led by James Corner Field Operations, the New York firm behind the High Line, working with local designers. The rebuilt promenade has more shade, more planting and more seating than the original, which was a hot, hard strip of granite, and it reads as a park rather than a corridor.

What to do there. Treat it as one link in a chain rather than a destination in itself. Westwards along the promenade are the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, the Museum of Art, the Space Museum and the Clock Tower, the last surviving fragment of the old Kowloon–Canton Railway terminus. The Star Ferry crossing to Central, at a fare that has stayed almost symbolic, is the best value on the harbour and gives you the same skyline from water level. The Symphony of Lights runs nightly at eight o'clock, when buildings on both shores light and beam in sequence; the promenade is the standard viewing position for it. For anyone genuinely following Hong Kong cinema, the Film Archive at Sai Wan Ho across the harbour holds the collection, the screenings and the research library that this promenade only gestures at.

Practicalities. East Tsim Sha Tsui station, exit J, brings you out beside Salisbury Garden; Tsim Sha Tsui station connects underground. Access is free and unrestricted at all hours. Shade is still limited by mid-afternoon in summer and the granite radiates heat; October to December is the comfortable season. Sunset and the half-hour of blue light afterwards are when the skyline photographs best, and also when the promenade is fullest. The whole route is level, paved and step-free, with lifts from the surrounding streets.