The Hong Kong Skyline

Warning: Mild suggestive material ahead. Be forewarned, bloody fundies... (I wouldn't want to "offend" you.)

I went to Tsim Sha Tsui today and took some great shots across Victoria Harbor of the Hong Kong skyline. It's just magnificent. I came out of New World Shopping Center and walked along the promenade with all these "star" plaques and cement handprints on the ground. It's suppose to be a Hollywood imitation, but most people there were more interested in the view than the cement slabs on the ground.

In the above photo, you can see the convention center (where the 1997 handover took place) and the triangular Central Plaza tower behind it. Had I been on this side of the harbor during Chinese New Year, it would've been a spectacle, as the entire skyline lit up with pyrotechnics - but I'd been on the other side.

This one's a bit blurry, I know. The rightmost tower with the tall long antenna and the triangular sides jutting out (not the tallest one) is the color-changing tower, which lights up at night in brilliant shades that cycle through the rainbow. I have no idea what it's really called, and I don't think many people do either; I've asked my aunt for the tower's name and she said she just called it the color-changing tower.

Now, going back to the left, that memorable triangular blade-like tower with the diagonal support beams on it is the Bank of China Tower, which is really a sleek and beautiful work of art which, I feel, will never go out of fashion, not like other buildings. A bit more to the left and you'll notice the also iconic (but now dwarfed) HSBC Tower, the first real skyscraper of Hong Kong which also appears on the back of some of the older bank notes.

Now, all the way to the left is Two IFC (International Finance Center; after 911, I think no one really wanted to call their building the World Trade Center). There's a great shopping mall beneath it. It's currently the tallest tower in the skyline with (you guessed it) 88 floors. Some more conservative quarters have complained of the phallic shape of the building, and this picture (http://www.emporis.com/en/il/im/?id=246348) of the fireworks on Chinese New Year last year certainly didn't help.

But before you Singie fundies out there start complaining, let's not jump the gun. Your skyline isn't exactly so un-pornographic. Take this, for instance (from http://www.talkingcock.com/html/article.php?sid=912), which I think is even more suggestive.

Yeah. You might have more balls, but ours is taller!