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Traveling down the Nathan Road, you will see the closely-packed buildings alongside, just like large juxtaposed walls enclosing the road. If you look deeper into this clustered zone of Tsim Sha Tsui, street culture including graffiti, stickers and regional road-side marketing adds color to and continuously revamps the district. When we passed by, we were so amazed by these features. Let’s go and find them out!
Graffiti: How is Tsim Sha Tsui pictured?
Graffiti is a type of street aesthetics. It is personalized - the application of personal labels and marks on murals (Manco, 2004, p.7, 43). It is illegitimate – the communalization of private or public places with paintings against regulations (Knight, 2008, p.118). It can take many different forms, for example, typographic and iconographic (Manco, 2004, p.8).
As we walked around Tsim Sha Tsui, we took photos of graffiti and realized that they often appear on official signs like guidepost, telephone booth, and government or private properties (Manco, 2004, p.11). Examples are shown in figures 1, 2 and 3. Despite their distribution, graffiti contained high level of personalization when referred to the style and the choice of words and images. Most of them were typographic and made up of English characters. In figures 4 and 5, dark words like ‘devil’ and ‘insane’ were common and typical in Tsim Sha Tsui’s graffiti. In comparison with worldwide graffiti, graffiti found in the district were relatively small in size and were likely to be drawn with handy tools like marker pens, rather than spray paint. All these somehow reflected some social and regional characteristics, most probably created by the ethnic minorities: Tsim Sha Tsui as a multi-cultural zone where they inhabited. Apart from conventional means of graffiti presentations (i.e. shabby walls and posts), sticker is one of the other means (Manco, 2004, p.11). It is observed to be another element of street culture found in Tsim Sha Tsui.
Regional road-side marketing: "Take one and have a look!"
Another noticeable element of street culture would be the regional road-side marketing. It was interesting to encounter people distributing leaflets, cards and brochures on the street, especially at the road intersections. Unlike other places like Mong Kok, these people were of different nationalities. Most of them were Southeast Asian residents and they worked for local companies. These companies offered services which were always associated with entertainment or telecommunication, such as foot massage, manicure and pedicure, food catering and telephone cards. Personal selling is required (Belch & Belch, 2007, p.23). As their job involved face-to-face contact with foreigners, they managed to speak various languages (commonly Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Japanese) to sell their companies’ services to visitors coming from different countries. We felt so warm and welcoming as we did not have difficulties communicating with the local residents. This intensified the portrayal of Tsim Sha Tsui as a multilingual area.
When we wandered through the district, we wanted to explore more about it. Uncovering these fascinating features as we travelled along the road let us experienced the vibrancy and the dynamics of Tsim Sha Tsui. We all agreed that graffiti and road-side marketing were some special and creative ways to express people’s idea in different languages. They may change over time, so you may see different series of Tsim Sha Tsui street art at different point of time. Graffiti and road-side marketing, the previously unattended pieces of urban art in Tsim Sha Tsui, disclose more subtle characteristics of the district – multilingual atmosphere at the heart of Hong Kong.
Bibliography:
Belch, G.E. & Belch, M.A. (2007). Advertising and promotion: an integrated marketing communications perspective. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Knight, C.K. (2008). Public art: Theory, practice and populism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Manco, T. (2004). Street logos. London: Thames and Hudson.
Graffiti: How is Tsim Sha Tsui pictured?
Graffiti is a type of street aesthetics. It is personalized - the application of personal labels and marks on murals (Manco, 2004, p.7, 43). It is illegitimate – the communalization of private or public places with paintings against regulations (Knight, 2008, p.118). It can take many different forms, for example, typographic and iconographic (Manco, 2004, p.8).
As we walked around Tsim Sha Tsui, we took photos of graffiti and realized that they often appear on official signs like guidepost, telephone booth, and government or private properties (Manco, 2004, p.11). Examples are shown in figures 1, 2 and 3. Despite their distribution, graffiti contained high level of personalization when referred to the style and the choice of words and images. Most of them were typographic and made up of English characters. In figures 4 and 5, dark words like ‘devil’ and ‘insane’ were common and typical in Tsim Sha Tsui’s graffiti. In comparison with worldwide graffiti, graffiti found in the district were relatively small in size and were likely to be drawn with handy tools like marker pens, rather than spray paint. All these somehow reflected some social and regional characteristics, most probably created by the ethnic minorities: Tsim Sha Tsui as a multi-cultural zone where they inhabited. Apart from conventional means of graffiti presentations (i.e. shabby walls and posts), sticker is one of the other means (Manco, 2004, p.11). It is observed to be another element of street culture found in Tsim Sha Tsui.
Another noticeable element of street culture would be the regional road-side marketing. It was interesting to encounter people distributing leaflets, cards and brochures on the street, especially at the road intersections. Unlike other places like Mong Kok, these people were of different nationalities. Most of them were Southeast Asian residents and they worked for local companies. These companies offered services which were always associated with entertainment or telecommunication, such as foot massage, manicure and pedicure, food catering and telephone cards. Personal selling is required (Belch & Belch, 2007, p.23). As their job involved face-to-face contact with foreigners, they managed to speak various languages (commonly Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Japanese) to sell their companies’ services to visitors coming from different countries. We felt so warm and welcoming as we did not have difficulties communicating with the local residents. This intensified the portrayal of Tsim Sha Tsui as a multilingual area.
When we wandered through the district, we wanted to explore more about it. Uncovering these fascinating features as we travelled along the road let us experienced the vibrancy and the dynamics of Tsim Sha Tsui. We all agreed that graffiti and road-side marketing were some special and creative ways to express people’s idea in different languages. They may change over time, so you may see different series of Tsim Sha Tsui street art at different point of time. Graffiti and road-side marketing, the previously unattended pieces of urban art in Tsim Sha Tsui, disclose more subtle characteristics of the district – multilingual atmosphere at the heart of Hong Kong.
Bibliography:
Belch, G.E. & Belch, M.A. (2007). Advertising and promotion: an integrated marketing communications perspective. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Knight, C.K. (2008). Public art: Theory, practice and populism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Manco, T. (2004). Street logos. London: Thames and Hudson.
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