In 1998, a year after the return of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China, the city’s government conceived an ambitious goal for the financial hub: to build an arts district to rival some of the world’s top cultural destinations.
Today, the West Kowloon Cultural District — a reclaimed area on Victoria Harbour around one-tenth of Manhattan’s Central Park in size — remains unfinished. Construction sites sit alongside museums like M+, which houses modern art, and the Palace Museum, an offshoot of the Beijing institution, as well as performance spaces like Xiqu Centre, a concert hall dedicated to Chinese opera.