The Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, which each year welcomes several million visitors.
If you stop along the Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade in Kowloon to admire the view of Hong Kong Island, there’s a highly unusual building that’s bound to catch your eye: the Convention and Exhibition Center, spectacular by day and surprisingly beautiful at night thanks to the colorful neon lights.
This is a venue of international importance for trade fairs, exhibitions, conventions, meetings and fashion shows. It hosts so many events that since it opened in 1988, it has required major work to expand the facility on two occasions, and now measures in excess of an impressive 92,000 square meters.
From the outside, the central structure is especially striking as it is entirely covered in glass and aluminum and has a roof designed to represent the wings of a seagull taking flight. From above, it resembles a spaceship and in reality, it’s almost as technological and futuristic as one.
There are six large exhibition halls inside as well as two large areas for organizing meetings and banquets, two theaters, 52 meeting rooms and seven restaurants.
The Convention Center also hosts many music concerts, including shows by world-famous artists such as Blur and Michael Bublé.
I recommend a visit to this incredible venue; if you’re lucky, you might even find an interesting exhibition.
In front of the complex, on the bay side, is the Expo Promenade, renamed Golden Bauhinia Square in 1997, the year that the Convention Center hosted the ceremony when Hong Kong ceased being a British colony and became a part of China again. It’s easy to see where the name came from: in the center of the square, you can’t miss the six-meter-high gilded statue of Hong Kong’s symbolic flower.
Let me leave you with an interesting fact: the bauhinia is the white flower featured in the center of Hong Kong’s flag, which is the same shade of red as the Chinese flag. Inside each petal is a star, adding up to five, just like the 5 stars on the flag of the mother nation.
Language: English