Choi Hung Estate
"A woman doing her actual grocery shopping stepped around six of us mid-photo without breaking stride, entirely unbothered."
A 1960s public housing estate whose rainbow-painted basketball court has become one of the most photographed spots in Hong Kong, tourists and residents sharing the same railing.
Choi Hung means “rainbow” in Cantonese, and the estate earns the name twice over — once from the pastel-colored residential towers, painted in bands of yellow, pink, and blue when the complex went up in the 1960s, and again from the basketball court at ground level, resurfaced at some point in vivid rainbow stripes that have made it one of the most photographed few square meters in the city. Lia and I climbed up to the third-floor car park that everyone uses as the unofficial viewing platform, joined a small queue of people waiting their turn at the railing, and understood within about ten seconds of looking down why the spot has taken on a life entirely separate from its actual purpose as public housing.
What I found more interesting than the photo itself was watching how the estate absorbs its unexpected fame. This is still an occupied public housing complex, home to thousands of residents going about entirely ordinary days, and the small, rotating crowd of visitors with cameras clearly registers to them as background noise rather than intrusion — a woman came through with a shopping trolley while we were mid-photo and simply walked around our group without a glance, the same unbothered efficiency I imagine she’d apply to any other minor obstacle on her way home. It’s a useful reminder that a viral photo spot is, to the people who actually live there, just the view from their kitchen window.
The court itself is used for actual basketball most of the day, which means your photo often includes real games in progress rather than an empty stage, and honestly I preferred it that way — kids mid-layup against a rainbow backdrop felt more alive than the staged, empty version I’d seen online before visiting. The towers surrounding the court, faded slightly by decades of weather but still distinctly colored, make for a striking frame regardless of the light, though the strongest color saturation comes in the hour or two around midday when the sun is directly overhead.
The estate sits a short walk from Choi Hung MTR station, and the whole detour, from station to viewing platform and back, takes under half an hour, which makes it an easy add-on to a day spent elsewhere in Kowloon rather than a destination requiring its own dedicated trip.
When to go: Midday for the strongest light and color saturation on the towers and court. Weekday mornings before school lets out are quietest for the viewing platform; by late afternoon on weekends the small third-floor car park queue can stretch fifteen minutes deep.