The Excelsior, Hong Kong Island’s largest hotel, rests on an important plot of land: in 1841, when Hong Kong officially became a British Colony, it was the first chunk of island to be sold by public auction. The Jardine Matheson Company built its original godown on the site, and modern Hong Kong promptly grew up around it.

The Excelsior’s location is, consequently, a large part of its pull. Hong Kong’s yacht club and typhoon shelter, as well as its noon gun – fired to welcome the chairmen of Jardine Matheson, who would come to be known as taipans, during the days of colony – are just a road’s width to the north. Hong Kong’s best known malls, in a city that at times feels like an single, interconnected shop, are to its south and west, in the area known as Causeway Bay, and Victoria Park is to its east, on land reclaimed from the eponymous bay. Read the rest of this entry »