Handpicked experience · Hong Kong
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Lion Rock Spirit is not old folklore but a broadcast: a drama series that began in 1972, a theme song from 1979, and a city that played it to itself through the SARS outbreak.
A national idea that can be dated to a specific broadcast
Post-war housing seen alongside the ridge it is named for
A guide able to order the drama, the song and the estates
Kowloon's country park, minutes from a dense district
Vantage points where hill, housing and water line up
A half day rather than a full one, in a demanding climate
Half a day in Kowloon with a private guide, built around the hill that gave Hong Kong its most quoted phrase. Five hours is enough to see the rock, walk in the country park beneath it and understand why an ordinary granite ridge became shorthand for how this city thinks about itself.
This is the part almost no visitor is told. Lion Rock Spirit is not old folklore. It is dateable, and it comes from broadcasting.
In 1972 the public broadcaster began a drama series called Below the Lion Rock, set among the working people of the estates spread out under the hill. It ran, on and off, until 2016. In 1979 it acquired a theme song, sung by Roman Tam, composed by Joseph Koo, with words by James Wong — and that song did what almost no theme tune manages: it left the programme and entered the language.
By the time of the SARS outbreak in 2003, it was what broadcasters played to a frightened city, and it has been treated as an unofficial anthem ever since. The phrase now means a particular kind of collective stubbornness — getting on with it together, without complaint — and is invoked in politics, in obituaries and in advertising alike.
Lion Rock is granite and rises to four hundred and ninety-five metres in the country park behind Kowloon, and it does look like a crouched lion from the right angle, which is how it got the name long before it got the meaning.
Below it lie the estates the drama was about — the housing that absorbed hundreds of thousands of arrivals in the post-war decades, built fast and lived in hard. Seeing the hill and the blocks in the same frame is the whole point of the outing, and it is a view that explains more about Hong Kong than any harbour panorama.
A guide who can put the programme, the song and the estates in order; time in the country park at the foot of the ridge; and the vantage points from which the arrangement of hill, housing and harbour becomes legible. Whether the walking goes any distance up depends on your appetite and the heat.
The country park paths are steep and stepped in places, and the humidity between May and September makes even modest climbing hard work. There is little shade on the exposed sections. Anyone intending to go high should bring proper water. The lower routes and viewpoints are manageable for most people and lose very little of the point.
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What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Five hours, with a private guide across Kowloon and the country park.
From a broadcast drama series about working people that began in 1972 and continued, intermittently, until 2016.
It was written for the programme in 1979, sung by Roman Tam to music by Joseph Koo with words by James Wong.
Because it was played repeatedly to the city during the 2003 outbreak and has carried that association since.
A collective stubbornness: getting through hardship together without making a fuss about it.
Just under five hundred metres at the summit, formed of hard igneous stone rather than the sedimentary rock common further west.
Because from certain angles the outcrop resembles a crouching lion, a name it carried long before it carried a meaning.
Only as far as suits you and the weather; the lower viewpoints carry most of the value.