Tourists take a break outside an herbal tea shop in Hong Kong in August, near the site of a ghost sign discovered in 2023.James Griffiths/The Globe and Mail
In October, 2023, a car crashed into the side of a shop on Hollywood Road, a busy thoroughfare in Hong Kong’s Central District, causing a slab of stone to fall off the building’s facade.
A car crashed into this building, exposing a terrazzo sign from the early 1900s under the newer brickwork.Ben Marans/Supplied
Underneath was a much older wall, on which a single red Chinese character could be seen. Likely a remnant of the Sui Man Book Store, which occupied the site in 1920s and sold literature banned across the border in what was still then the Republic of China, the uncovered writing was an extreme example of what is known as a “ghost sign,” one hidden for decades.
“A ghost sign is a sign which appears out of context, whether that would be out of time, out of place, or that the person who owned or made the sign would never have expected or intended us to see it in this present condition or time,” said Billy Potts, co-creator of the Hong Kong Ghost Signs project.
Alongside photographer Ben Marans, Mr. Potts has spent years documenting ghost signs across Hong Kong. These range from faded advertisements painted on the sides of buildings, to neon signs for businesses that no longer exist, or those – like the Hollywood Road sign – carved in terrazzo, a smooth, polished material made of marble and other stone once common across Hong Kong.
The team recently launched an interactive map of more than 300 ghost signs, encouraging members of the public to submit sightings and photos to expand the database.
“The study of signage is actually a very neat way to understand the city’s character as a whole,” Mr. Potts said. Historical signs document shifting artistic styles, fashions and cultural mores – we no longer emblazon buildings with 10-metre-high cigarette ads, for example.
A screenshot of the Hong Kong Ghost Signs interactive map.Supplied
The term “ghost sign” was first coined in the 1980s, though its exact origins remain unclear, and how expansive the descriptor should be is hotly debated. Examples can be found across Toronto and many other Canadian cities, with some dating back to the early 1900s.
While urban renewal is a fact of life in any city, Hong Kong takes it to another level. With Hong Kong having some of the highest property prices in the world, developers here rarely allow nostalgia to get in the way of profits. Many of the territory’s most famous landmarks, from the grand harbour-front buildings of the early British colonial era to Kai Tak Airport, where planes once landed amid a cluster of skyscrapers, are long gone.
In recent years, the government has taken a greater role in preservation, declaring as official monuments historic buildings such as the Jamia Mosque (erected in 1916) and the Old Pathological Institute (1906). But officials have also faced criticism for failing to save symbols of the territory’s past, such as the iconic Jumbo Kingdom floating restaurant, which fell into bankruptcy and later sank in unclear circumstances during a botched relocation to Cambodia.
“Hong Kong is basically a culture of disappearance,” said Mr. Potts. “It can easily be defined or articulated in terms of what we have lost just as much as by what we currently have.”
Restaurants in Hong Kong are often short-lived. Anyone expecting to find donuts under this ghost sign will come away disappointed.James Griffiths/The Globe and Mail
Much attention has been paid in recent years to the disappearance of Hong Kong’s neon signage, once a symbol of the city, but Mr. Potts said far less work is being done to preserve or document ghost signs, which are often less glamorous or noticeable.
“They’re very quiet and their charm is very subtle,” he said. “Which is why we went around and photographed them so urgently, because we know there’s very little other way to record them.”
Indeed, when The Globe and Mail set out to photograph a series of signs for this story, several had already disappeared since Mr. Potts and Mr. Marans first documented them.
Mr. Potts said he hoped the extra attention the project was getting with the launch of the map, building on a popular Instagram account, could help spark a wider conversation around historical conservation.
A logo dating from the 1980s can still be seen on the Hong Kong Ice and Cold Storage Dairy Farm building, alongside another ghost sign advertising Good Companion cigarettes.James Griffiths/The Globe and Mail
That there is appetite for projects harkening back to Hong Kong’s past is undeniable. Tourists can often be seen posing outside locations from old Hong Kong movies or taking selfies in front of what colonial-era architecture remains, and there is a seemingly endless series of videos, photobooks and gallery shows focused on the Kowloon Walled City, a densely packed high-rise slum that was demolished in 1994.
For Mr. Potts, surviving remnants of Hong Kong’s past should be seen as “valuable assets” and preserved as such.
“People are coming to Hong Kong not to see a generic modern city, but to see Hong Kong,” he said. “And what makes Hong Kong charming is not always what everyone would think of as charming – it’s brusque and it can be grungy, but in the end it’s its own thing. It has its own personality.”
A street sign notes the closure of Hong Kong's iconic floating restaurant. The ship itself is no longer there.James Griffiths/The Globe and Mail