Member-only story

108 Thoughts I Had When I Was At The Peak

Shirley Lee
17 min readNov 16, 2023

--

Photo by Krzysztof Kotkowicz on Unsplash

The Peak. The place that has the best view of buildings and the best night view in the world — or so I was told since I was a child. I had always known it as a tourist trap — they’ve got a Madame Tussaud Wax Museum there; it seems pretty obvious. Although I have lived in Hong Kong for 28 years, I had never actually been to the place.

Whoever was in charge of naming this place was not creative with the naming either — even in Chinese, the name of the place literally translates to “hilltop” (山頂), which sounds pretty unfun.

Other places in Hong Kong that offer a nice view also have pretty unfun names, but they are all easier to reach compared to the Peak. I have even had the chance to visit those places multiple times for free. Not so easy when it comes to the Peak — the roads that lead up to it are so limited and narrow that they had to build a special tram just for getting people up and down this specific hill. It’s hard to get there and even harder to leave. Such a setup makes The Peak a perfect corner to siphon money out of tourist’s wallets.

All textbooks introducing The Peak always use a photo of the watermelon-shaped Peak Tower, which looks like an architectural mistake.

--

--

Shirley Lee
Shirley Lee

Written by Shirley Lee

person || @thatshirleylee || subscribe for more updates: buttondown.email/thatshirleylee

Responses (4)