Harsh Truth About Hong Kong’s Hottest Instagram Photo Spot: Yick Cheong Building

① Iconic Photo Spot, Yick Cheong Building

Hong Kong is an exotic overseas travel destination. Despite its challenges, Hong Kong continues to captivate travelers with its charming alleyways that seem to pop out of a movie, diverse food, and dazzling night views. With the increase in tourists visiting Hong Kong, Instagram’s most famous photo spot is gathering attention.

The Yick Cheong Building is a landmark in Hong Kong. It’s famous as a place where you can take pictures with a vintage building backdrop that captures the Hong Kong vibe. Most tourists visit the Yick Cheong Building during their trip to Hong Kong.

The Yick Cheong Building is a place that exudes a unique vibe, revealing its long history even in photos.
It became famous as the filming location for the movies Transformers 4 and Kung Fu Hustle. It continues to serve as a backdrop for various dramas and commercials. Although authorities banned photography to protect the residents’ privacy, the Yick Cheong Building still attracts popularity as a photo spot in Hong Kong.

The Yick Cheong Building, a massive D-shaped residential complex, triggers tourists’ curiosity with its unique scenery, which is only seen in Hong Kong. It is an actual apartment where people live. It’s a massive building with many residents.

The Yick Cheong Building, built in the 1960s, is a rare old-style apartment in Hong Kong.

Unlike regular apartments, the unique aspect of this place is its tightly packed houses. Developers built it as a high-density apartment to accommodate ordinary people in response to rapid population growth in the past. This approach was a solution proposed in Hong Kong, which has a large population relative to its small land area.

The Yick Cheong Building is of a tremendous scale but very old. Seeing the houses closely attached can make one feel claustrophobic. The uneven and rugged construction of the building surface is also a characteristic of the Yick Cheong Building.

② Hong Kong, Famous for Its Murderous Rents

The Yick Cheong Building, like the rest of Hong Kong, is famous for its exorbitant rents. The tightly packed houses offer a glimpse into Hong Kong’s residential culture. To the eyes of a tourist, it’s a unique apartment that retains the old aspects of Hong Kong, but there’s a hidden story behind it. With thousands of windows and outdoor units closely attached, it seems inconvenient to live in, but the price per square meter exceeds $9,000. The houses are tiny, but the costs are astonishingly high.

The price of a house in Hong Kong exceeds 20 times the average household income in Hong Kong. The housing problem is severe for the working-class people in Hong Kong. The number of “McRefugees,” people who sleep in McDonald’s due to high housing prices, is also increasing.

In 2020, experts named it the city with the most expensive housing prices in the world. In Hong Kong, where the land is narrow and the population is large, many residential spaces like the Yick Cheong Building exist.

Once, Hong Kong was controversial for its “cage homes.” Many people live in extremely poor conditions that are hard to believe as actual homes. You can see a residential form where multiple households live in one divided house. Due to this, there are many high-density apartments in Hong Kong.

Builders have constructed the buildings as high as possible, creating dense spaces to accommodate many people. Most of Hong Kong’s high-rise apartment complexes look similar. Just looking at it can make you feel suffocated.

German photographer Michael Wolf once released photos of Hong Kong’s high-rise apartments packed tightly together. At that time, Hong Kong’s high-density apartments became a hot topic under “apartments with racks.”

③ Colorful Rainbow-Colored Apartments

On the other hand, Choi Hung Apartments is another popular photo spot in Hong Kong, along with the Yick Cheong Building. Among Korean tourists, Choi Hung Apartments has started to gain popularity as a travel destination in Hong Kong. Residents also inhabit the apartment near MRT Choi Hung Station.

Built-in 1962, this apartment, named after the rainbow, saw a facelift in 2007 when its exterior was repainted in rainbow colors, giving it a cleaner feel than the Yick Cheong Building. For tourists, taking pictures at the basketball court in front of the apartment has become a part of their travel itinerary.

Thanks to the colorful colors, you can take a pleasing picture anywhere you point your camera. However, since Choi Hung Apartments is also a place where people live, it’s essential to avoid taking photos to the extent of causing inconvenience to the residents.

By. Kim Min Jae