Title
1970s Hong Kong by Night Ocean Terminal Harbour Ship Skyline K.P. Yuen Postcard 375
Front Description
Colour chrome photographic night view, horizontal format, taken from the Ocean Terminal at Tsim Sha Tsui looking south across Victoria Harbour toward the illuminated skyline of Central and Wan Chai, with the dark mass of Victoria Peak rising behind.
The foreground and right side are occupied by the upper works of a large vessel moored alongside the terminal, lit by warm floodlight and rendered in cream, buff and orange tones. Visible are two heavy king posts or sampson posts with crosstrees, a tall mast with rigging stays, radar platform and ladder rungs at the right, a cargo derrick swung across the deck at the left, a white deckhouse with a doorway, ventilator cowls, and the covered lifeboats in their davits along the boat deck. Strings of festoon lighting are rigged along a deck railing at the lower left, the individual bulbs glowing in warm orange and red. Wire stays and rigging lines cross the frame diagonally.
The middle of the card is the black water of the harbour, broken by long vertical reflections of the shore lighting in white, gold, red and a broad band of intense green at the centre right, cast by a large illuminated sign. Horizontal streaks of light drawn out by the long exposure mark vessels moving across the fairway, with a small craft visible at the centre.
Across the water, the northern shore of Hong Kong Island is shown as a dense wall of high-rise towers with their windows lit in grids of white, gold and pale green. Dominating the centre is a very tall pale slab tower, its façade uniformly lit, with red aircraft warning lights at the roofline. To either side stand numerous other towers of twenty to forty storeys, including a block at the left with a strongly patterned lit façade in gold, and further ranks of towers extending to the right. Illuminated advertising signs are visible along the skyline, including a green rooftop sign at the centre right, a red sign to its left, and further coloured signage toward the right edge. The waterfront frontage is picked out as a continuous line of lights at the water’s edge.
Behind and above, the ground rises through the Mid-Levels, where scattered residential blocks and terraces show as clusters and strings of light climbing the slope, thinning toward the summit. The dark silhouette of Victoria Peak fills the upper portion of the card, with a line of red obstruction lights along its ridge and the transmitting installations at the summit. The sky above is a deep blue-black with a faint band of residual dusk light along the horizon.
Colours are heavily saturated in the manner typical of period chrome night photography. The card has a plain white border on all four sides, with light edge and corner wear.
Back Description
Divided back, printed in green ink on white stock. Upper left, in two lines of capitals: “HONG KONG BY NIGHT. VIEW FROM THE OCEAN TERMINAL.” Centre top in large open capitals: “POST CARD”, with beneath it in spaced capitals: “FROM HONG KONG”.
Below, running across the card: “CORRESPONDENCE” at left and “ADDRESS” at right, separated by a vertical dotted dividing rule running down the centre of the card.
At the upper right, a square stamp box outlined in green containing three lines: “PLACE STAMP HERE”, with the series number “375” printed in bold inside the lower part of the box.
Along the left edge, set vertically and reading upward, in small capitals: “COLOR PHOTOGRAPH BY K. P. YUEN”.
No printer’s imprint appears at the foot of this card.
The card is unused and unposted. There is no stamp, no postmark, no address and no handwritten message of any kind; both the correspondence and address panels are entirely blank. No album mounting marks, pinholes, ink or pencil annotations are present. Light age toning, a few faint marks at the upper and left edges, a small yellowish spot at the lower right, and minor corner wear.
Estimated Era
Circa mid to late 1970s. The chrome finish with white border, the divided back with separate “CORRESPONDENCE” and “ADDRESS” headings and the “POST CARD FROM HONG KONG” heading follow the standard Hong Kong tourist-card format, and the series number 375 places this card at the late end of the numbered K. P. Yuen run, after the Victoria City (369) and old railway station (371) cards. The Ocean Terminal, from which the photograph was taken, opened in 1966, giving the earliest possible date. The skyline itself points to the 1970s: Central and Wan Chai are shown with a dense concentration of tall lit towers and a heavily built-up Mid-Levels, development well beyond that of the 1960s night view in this series, yet still preceding the landmark towers of the 1980s. The moored ocean liner or cargo vessel at the terminal reflects Ocean Terminal’s role as Hong Kong’s principal passenger ship berth in this period. K. P. Yuen was among the most prolific Hong Kong colour photographers of the 1950s and 1960s, his images continuing in postcard circulation into the 1970s.
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