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39-541: Hong Kong City Hall ( Chinese : 香港大會堂 ) is a building located at Edinburgh Place , Central , Hong Kong Island , Hong Kong . In the 19th century, the British founded City of Victoria in the present-day Central after the establishment of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong . The Crown Colony (including City of Victoria) was governed by a Governor and Urban Council , there was no mayor or city council, therefore,

78-509: A certain extent in South Korea , remain virtually identical to traditional characters, with variations between the two forms largely stylistic. There has historically been a debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters . Because the simplifications are fairly systematic, it is possible to convert computer-encoded characters between the two sets, with the main issue being ambiguities in simplified representations resulting from

117-480: A civic centre in Hong Kong. It was built on a 10,000 square metres (110,000 sq ft) plot of land on the newly reclaimed seafront, about 200 metres (660 ft) from the first generation building. The foundation stone laying ceremony took place on 25 February 1960 with Sir Robert Brown Black , then Governor of Hong Kong , who also presided over the official opening ceremony on 2 March 1962. The City Hall

156-613: A standard set of Chinese character forms used to write Chinese languages . In Taiwan , the set of traditional characters is regulated by the Ministry of Education and standardized in the Standard Form of National Characters . These forms were predominant in written Chinese until the middle of the 20th century, when various countries that use Chinese characters began standardizing simplified sets of characters, often with characters that existed before as well-known variants of

195-573: A three-storey car park. City Hall Memorial Garden enclosing the World War II (1941–1945) Memorial Shrine The High Block , a 12-storey building, is in the south-western end and houses a number of government facilities: The 3-storey Low Block is at the eastern end, with the following facilities: Other civic centres in Hong Kong: Nearby sites: Traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are

234-812: Is 産 (also the accepted form in Japan and Korea), while in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan the accepted form is 產 (also the accepted form in Vietnamese chữ Nôm ). The PRC tends to print material intended for people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and overseas Chinese in traditional characters. For example, versions of the People's Daily are printed in traditional characters, and both People's Daily and Xinhua have traditional character versions of their website available, using Big5 encoding. Mainland companies selling products in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional characters in order to communicate with consumers;

273-493: The Chinese Commercial News , World News , and United Daily News all use traditional characters, as do some Hong Kong–based magazines such as Yazhou Zhoukan . The Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified characters. DVDs are usually subtitled using traditional characters, influenced by media from Taiwan as well as by the two countries sharing the same DVD region , 3. With most having immigrated to

312-632: The British monarch (on the advice of the Foreign Secretary ), exercised the executive branch of the government of Hong Kong throughout British sovereignty and, with the exception of a brief experiment after World War II , no serious attempt was made to introduce representative government, until the final years of British rule. The governor of Hong Kong chaired the colonial cabinet , the Executive Council (ExCo), and, until 1993,

351-732: The Hong Kong International Film Festival in 1977, and the International Arts Carnival in 1982 were hosted there. The conference room of the former Urban Council was also at the lower building of the City Hall. The High block once housed Hong Kong's principal public library , until a new Central library was opened in 2001; the Hong Kong art gallery (which became the Hong Kong Art Museum in 1969) began life there on

390-744: The Kensiu language . Governor of Hong Kong The governor of Hong Kong was the representative of the British Crown in Hong Kong from 1843 to 1997. In this capacity, the governor was president of the Executive Council and commander-in-chief of the British Forces Overseas Hong Kong . The governor's roles were defined in the Hong Kong Letters Patent and Royal Instructions . Upon

429-640: The Shanghainese -language character U+20C8E 𠲎 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-20C8E —a composition of 伐 with the ⼝   'MOUTH' radical—used instead of the Standard Chinese 嗎 ; 吗 . Typefaces often use the initialism TC to signify the use of traditional Chinese characters, as well as SC for simplified Chinese characters . In addition, the Noto, Italy family of typefaces, for example, also provides separate fonts for

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468-673: The Brave and the Dead. The entrance gates to the City Hall Memorial Garden bear the regimental emblems of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps and Royal Hong Kong Regiment . The complex also incorporates a three-storey car park, with 171 car park spaces, which was also designed by architects Ron Phillips and Alan Fitch. The second and current City Hall complex has two buildings, a garden and

507-677: The City Hall does not hold the offices of a city government, unlike most city halls around the world. Instead, it is a complex providing municipal services, including performing venues and libraries. The City Hall is managed by the Government's Leisure and Cultural Services Department . The Urban Council (UrbCo) managed the City Hall (through the Urban Services Department ) and held its meetings there prior to its dissolution in December 1999. Prior to its dissolution

546-555: The People's Republic of China, traditional Chinese characters are standardised according to the Table of Comparison between Standard, Traditional and Variant Chinese Characters . Dictionaries published in mainland China generally show both simplified and their traditional counterparts. There are differences between the accepted traditional forms in mainland China and elsewhere, for example the accepted traditional form of 产 in mainland China

585-610: The Second World War. It is a popular spot and obligatory backdrop for photographs of couples who celebrate their marriage in the City Hall Registry. Within the Memorial Shrine are embedded memorial Roll of Honour and Plaques to combat units who fought in Hong Kong during World War II (1941–1945). Inscribed on the walls of the Memorial Shrine are eight chinese characters evoking the everlasting spirit of

624-587: The United States during the second half of the 19th century, Chinese Americans have long used traditional characters. When not providing both, US public notices and signs in Chinese are generally written in traditional characters, more often than in simplified characters. In the past, traditional Chinese was most often encoded on computers using the Big5 standard, which favored traditional characters. However,

663-699: The UrbCo served as the municipal council for Hong Kong Island and Kowloon (including New Kowloon ). The UrbCo had its meeting chamber in the Low Block of the City Hall. Hong Kong's first City Hall, which existed from 1869 to 1933, occupied the current sites of the HSBC Hong Kong headquarters building (partly) and the Bank of China Building . It was designed by the French architect Achille-Antoine Hermitte and

702-618: The colony. The chief secretaries were historically drawn from the Colonial Office or British military. One Royal Navy Vice Admiral served as administrator after World War II . Four Japanese military officers (three Army officers and one naval vice admiral) served as administrators during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong in World War II. The governor of Hong Kong used a Daimler DS420 for day to day transport and

741-466: The end of British rule and the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, most of the civil functions of this office went to the chief executive of Hong Kong , and military functions went to the commander of the People's Liberation Army Hong Kong Garrison . Authorities and duties of the governor were defined in the Hong Kong Letters Patent and Royal Instructions in 1843. The governor, appointed by

780-400: The governors of Hong Kong were either professional diplomats or senior colonial officials, except for the last governor, Chris Patten , who was a career politician. In December 1996, the governor's salary was HK$ 3,036,000 per annum, tax-free. It was fixed at 125% of the chief secretary's salary. In the absence of the governor, the chief secretary immediately became the acting governor of

819-493: The inverse is equally true as well. In digital media, many cultural phenomena imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, such as music videos, karaoke videos, subtitled movies, and subtitled dramas, use traditional Chinese characters. In Hong Kong and Macau , traditional characters were retained during the colonial period, while the mainland adopted simplified characters. Simplified characters are contemporaneously used to accommodate immigrants and tourists, often from

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858-725: The mainland. The increasing use of simplified characters has led to concern among residents regarding protecting what they see as their local heritage. Taiwan has never adopted simplified characters. The use of simplified characters in government documents and educational settings is discouraged by the government of Taiwan. Nevertheless, with sufficient context simplified characters are likely to be successfully read by those used to traditional characters, especially given some previous exposure. Many simplified characters were previously variants that had long been in some use, with systematic stroke simplifications used in folk handwriting since antiquity. Traditional characters were recognized as

897-682: The majority of Chinese text in mainland China are simplified characters , there is no legislation prohibiting the use of traditional Chinese characters, and often traditional Chinese characters remain in use for stylistic and commercial purposes, such as in shopfront displays and advertising. Traditional Chinese characters remain ubiquitous on buildings that predate the promulgation of the current simplification scheme, such as former government buildings, religious buildings, educational institutions, and historical monuments. Traditional Chinese characters continue to be used for ceremonial, cultural, scholarly/academic research, and artistic/decorative purposes. In

936-983: The merging of previously distinct character forms. Many Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between these character sets. Traditional characters are known by different names throughout the Chinese-speaking world. The government of Taiwan officially refers to traditional Chinese characters as 正體字 ; 正体字 ; zhèngtǐzì ; 'orthodox characters'. This term is also used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard characters, including both simplified, and traditional, from other variants and idiomatic characters . Users of traditional characters elsewhere, as well as those using simplified characters, call traditional characters 繁體字 ; 繁体字 ; fántǐzì ; 'complex characters', 老字 ; lǎozì ; 'old characters', or 全體字 ; 全体字 ; quántǐzì ; 'full characters' to distinguish them from simplified characters. Some argue that since traditional characters are often

975-677: The official script in Singapore until 1969, when the government officially adopted Simplified characters. Traditional characters still are widely used in contexts such as in baby and corporation names, advertisements, decorations, official documents and in newspapers. The Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative in Southeast Asia regarding simplification. Although major public universities teach in simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications such as

1014-509: The old Coat of Arms of Hong Kong, which was removed before the handover in 1997. One major consideration was juxtaposing the city bustle whilst maximising public access to the surrounding area. Thus, the out-sized public areas of the Memorial Gardens and the piazza in front were conceived as a natural extension to promote the "freedom of movement and a sense of unlimited space". The most important civic function performed by City Hall

1053-476: The original design by Professor Gordon Brown, the first Head of Department of Architecture of Hong Kong University, together with his team including Patricia O'Reilly Mayne, was completed by British architects Ronald Phillips and Alan Fitch at the cost of HK$ 20 million. With its clean lines and stark geometric forms, the new Hall is an example of the International style fashionable at the time. The structure

1092-700: The original standard forms, they should not be called 'complex'. Conversely, there is a common objection to the description of traditional characters as 'standard', due to them not being used by a large population of Chinese speakers. Additionally, as the process of Chinese character creation often made many characters more elaborate over time, there is sometimes a hesitation to characterize them as 'traditional'. Some people refer to traditional characters as 'proper characters' ( 正字 ; zhèngzì or 正寫 ; zhèngxiě ) and to simplified characters as 簡筆字 ; 简笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'simplified-stroke characters' or 減筆字 ; 减笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'reduced-stroke characters', as

1131-781: The predominant forms. Simplified characters as codified by the People's Republic of China are predominantly used in mainland China , Malaysia, and Singapore. "Traditional" as such is a retronym applied to non-simplified character sets in the wake of widespread use of simplified characters. Traditional characters are commonly used in Taiwan , Hong Kong , and Macau , as well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside of Southeast Asia. As for non-Chinese languages written using Chinese characters, Japanese kanji include many simplified characters known as shinjitai standardized after World War II, sometimes distinct from their simplified Chinese counterparts . Korean hanja , still used to

1170-533: The tenth and eleventh floors. The Hong Kong Museum of History relocated in 1975, and the Hong Kong Museum of Art also moved out of City Hall in 1991. The City Hall Memorial Garden , located at the north-western quadrant between the High Block and Low Block, is a walled garden wherein a 12-sided dodecagon Memorial Shrine commemorates soldiers and citizens who died in defence of Hong Kong during

1209-581: The traditional character set used in Taiwan ( TC ) and the set used in Hong Kong ( HK ). Most Chinese-language webpages now use Unicode for their text. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends the use of the language tag zh-Hant to specify webpage content written with traditional characters. In the Japanese writing system , kyujitai are traditional forms, which were simplified to create shinjitai for standardized Japanese use following World War II. Kyūjitai are mostly congruent with

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1248-985: The traditional characters in Chinese, save for minor stylistic variation. Characters that are not included in the jōyō kanji list are generally recommended to be printed in their traditional forms, with a few exceptions. Additionally, there are kokuji , which are kanji wholly created in Japan, rather than originally being borrowed from China. In the Korean writing system , hanja —replaced almost entirely by hangul in South Korea and totally replaced in North Korea —are mostly identical with their traditional counterparts, save minor stylistic variations. As with Japanese, there are autochthonous hanja, known as gukja . Traditional Chinese characters are also used by non-Chinese ethnic groups. The Maniq people living in Thailand and Malaysia use Chinese characters to write

1287-518: The ubiquitous Unicode standard gives equal weight to simplified and traditional Chinese characters, and has become by far the most popular encoding for Chinese-language text. There are various input method editors (IMEs) available for the input of Chinese characters . Many characters, often dialectical variants, are encoded in Unicode but cannot be inputted using certain IMEs, with one example being

1326-587: The words for simplified and reduced are homophonous in Standard Chinese , both pronounced as jiǎn . The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han dynasty c.  200 BCE , with the sets of forms and norms more or less stable since the Southern and Northern dynasties period c.  the 5th century . Although

1365-499: Was also the president of the Legislative Council . The governor appointed most, if not all, of the members of the colony's legislature (known colloquially as LegCo), which was largely an advisory body until the first indirect election to LegCo was held in 1985. Initially, both councils were dominated by British expatriates, but this progressively gave way to local Hong Kong Chinese appointees in later years. Historically,

1404-493: Was as a ceremonial location for the swearing in of successive Governors following their inauguration: The 24th to 28th Governors all swore their oaths of office there. City Hall's Concert hall and theatre have been an important home to the performing arts in Hong Kong since its inauguration. A number of culture events, including the Hong Kong Festival , Hong Kong Arts Festival in 1973, Asian Arts Festival in 1976,

1443-464: Was constructed using steel and concrete, and much of the equipment was of steel, glass and anodised aluminium. The two separate blocks and gardens were laid out as a cohesive whole, along a central axis. The entrance to the lower block (exhibition hall) of the City Hall formed an axis with Queen's Pier to lend a sense of occasion to visiting dignitaries. On the façade of the Lower Block once had

1482-593: Was opened by Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh , in a ceremony on 28 June 1869. The current site of the HSBC Hong Kong headquarters building was occupied in part by the old City Hall, and in part by the first and second generations of the HSBC building. The second and current City Hall complex was built in the late 1950s following a public campaign led by the Sino-British Club for the re-establishment of

1521-613: Was placed under the responsibility of the Urban Council . Since 2009, it had been listed as a Grade I historic building . On 20 May 2022, the Hong Kong City Hall was declared a monument under the Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance . At the age of 60, it is the youngest as well as the first post-WW2 building in Hong Kong being declared as a monument. The building complex erected at the present site based on

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