A ridge road of antique dealers and galleries, with a lane of curio stalls below it that was named for stolen goods.
Hollywood Road was the second road the British built in Hong Kong, laid out along the ridge in 1844 and named — the usual account has it — after the holly bushes at the Governor’s family estate in England rather than after anywhere in California.
It runs about a kilometre through Sheung Wan and Central and is the antiques street.
The dealers
Around eighty shops, ranging from serious dealers in Chinese antiquities — Han pottery, Tang tomb figures, Ming and Qing furniture, jade, snuff bottles, bronzes — to shops selling reproduction furniture and decorative pieces.
The serious end is expensive and the material is generally sound. Reputable dealers provide provenance documentation and will explain export requirements, which matter: China restricts the export of cultural relics, and Hong Kong’s own rules and the destination country’s import rules both apply.
If you are buying anything significant, ask for the paperwork and take it seriously.
The galleries have increased as the antiques trade has contracted — Hollywood Road and the streets off it now hold a substantial concentration of contemporary art dealers.
Cat Street
Upper Lascar Row, a pedestrian lane running parallel below Hollywood Road, and known as Cat Street.
The name is generally explained as coming from “lo shu fo” — mouse goods, meaning stolen property — and the buyers who picked over it being the cats. It was a market for secondhand and dubious goods for a century.
Now it is stalls of curios: Mao badges and Little Red Books, propaganda posters, old cameras, coins, watches, jade, carved wood, opium pipes and a great deal of manufactured antiquity.
Almost none of it is old. Some of it is charming, prices are negotiable, and it takes half an hour.
Around it
Man Mo Temple is on Hollywood Road and is the reason many people are on the street.
PMQ — the former Police Married Quarters, a 1951 block converted in 2014 into around a hundred studios for Hong Kong designers, makers and small brands. Free to walk through, and much the best place in the city to buy something made locally.
Tai Kwun is at the eastern end.
Possession Street nearby marks, by tradition, where the British landed in January 1841 and raised the flag. The waterline was there; it is now several hundred metres inland after reclamation.
Practicalities
Shops keep daytime hours, many closing Sundays or Mondays. Cat Street stalls run daily until late afternoon.
Sheung Wan MTR exit A2, then uphill, or take the Mid-Levels Escalator up and walk west.
