Avenue of Stars

Lia and I walked the Avenue of Stars for the first time by accident, looking for somewhere to sit after a day of overheating in Tsim Sha Tsui, and we ended up staying for two hours without meaning to. The promenade runs along the harbourfront for the better part of a kilometre, handrail worn smooth by decades of tourists leaning on it to take the same photograph, and it earns every one of those photographs. Hong Kong Island sits directly across the water — ICC and IFC and the whole glass ridge behind them — close enough that at night the reflections stretch unbroken across the harbour like something spilled and still moving.

The avenue itself is a tribute to Hong Kong cinema, handprints of actors and directors set into the pavement the way Hollywood does it on the other side of the Pacific, and there is a bronze Bruce Lee in a fighting stance that every single passer-by stops to photograph, myself included, with no shame at all. But the handprints are not really why anyone lingers. It is the bench-and-skyline arrangement, unimprovable, that keeps people here past sunset — couples, families, elderly men doing slow tai chi near the railing while ferries cut white lines across the dark water behind them.

At 8pm the Symphony of Lights runs, a synchronised display of laser beams and building illumination timed to music piped from speakers along the promenade. I will say honestly that on its own the show is a little dated, more charming than spectacular. But watching it with a few hundred strangers, all of us facing the same direction, all of us here for the same reason, has its own quiet pull. Lia said it reminded her of watching fireworks from a rooftop in Mexico City, different scale, same feeling of a whole crowd looking up together.

Come from the Tsim Sha Tsui MTR exit and you will hit the promenade within minutes, past the Clock Tower — the last remnant of the old Kowloon-Canton Railway terminus, standing alone now like a monument to a station that no longer exists around it. Street performers set up most evenings between the Clock Tower and the cultural centre, and the ice cream vendors do steady business regardless of season, which tells you something about the humidity here most of the year.

When to go: Any evening works, but arrive thirty minutes before sunset to watch the skyline shift from daylight glass to full illumination. October to December gives you the clearest air and the least humidity for comfortable lingering. Weekend evenings draw the biggest crowds; a Tuesday gets you more bench space and the same view.