From abandoned houses to haunted prisons, local explorers HK Urbex scout the city of Hong Kong to immortalise forsaken places before they are lost forever. Their excursions regularly uncover corners of Hong Kong rarely seen by locals.

"One minute you're in the heart of the city, with a million people," says Ghost, a member of HK Urbex. "Five minutes later you're in an old deserted site."

"The contrast is surreal," he adds, describing an excursion into an abandoned private hospital in Central - Hong Kong's financial district.

While most people revel in Hong Kong's shimmering skyscrapers, modern buildings and glitzy malls, for HK Urbex it is these hidden abandoned places that make Hong Kong unique. It's all about the excitement of exploring and discovering; for instance, they never know when they'll run into an ancient site surrounded by modern skyscrapers.

After visiting an abandoned TV studio that impressed them greatly, Ghost and fellow explorer, codename Echo Delta, founded HK Urbex in 2013. That was the beginning of a vast number of explorations around Hong Kong searing for crumbling edifices and documenting them with high-quality first-person-shooter style videos and eerie photographs. HK Urbex comprises a crew of eight anonymous urban explorers. Most of which are journalists, videographers and photographers, who won't disclose their identity in order to keep the focus onto the sites. Their masks and balaclavas also have the function of protecting them from harmful elements like asbestos, apart from law enforcement.

"Sometimes we're the last people to step foot in a building before it's demolished," said Pripyat, an HK Urbex crew member. "And then the next week, it's gone."

Inside these forgotten buildings, the explorers often find personal artifacts, including portraits, postcards, clothes and photo albums. Every room has its own story tell, a story lost in time.

"You inevitably end up doing kind of like detective forensics work," Pripyat said. "The last place we went, we found an x-ray of a guy that revealed a worrying shadow in his chest. You try to piece together these lives."

Urban exploration in Hong Kong is not just about discoveries, it's also about risks. The first one would be trespassing.

"Not everyone would deem climbing a fence to take a few photos of an antiquated site as legal, so the concealment helps," Ghost said. "What we're doing is not about us, it's about so much more than that."

"Stationary guards are easier to skirt," says Echo Delta. "As for patrolling guards, we need to play hide-and-seek."

After trespassing, they walk around, taking the place in from the bottom to the top. According to them, they observe, document and leave without altering anything.

"Visiting the abandoned sites always evokes a lot of emotions and feelings," says Echo Delta. "It's like a child opening up a wrapped present, always curious what is inside the box."

Ghost adds: "I like the quiet, spiritual feeling of a deserted building. Sometimes I even do urban exploration alone. It's a one-on-one with the building, a very serene moment".

Since their foundation, the group has explored everything from old Chinese Medicine factories to derelict psychiatric wards, historic colonial-era mansions, old British military barracks and political prisons, decommissioned hospitals, rundown apartment buildings, metro stations, paint factories and cinemas. 

World's first Hello Kitty dim sum restaurant opens in Hong Kong

From Hello Kitty cafes to Hello Kitty hotels and even Hello Kitty trains, there doesn't seem to be an end to the Hello Kitty cultural empire. Far from becoming obsolete, getting played out or old, this fictionilised character keeps conquering the hearts and minds of new generations and inspiring new creativity around its image, but this time it's not Tokyo but Hong Kong the one pioneering a Hello Kitty franchise and what better way to do it than with traditional Chinese cuisine.

Hello Kitty lovers, rejoice, the first dim sum restaurant has opened its colourful doors to the world in Hong Kong.

This Japanese fictional character's fandom is not a novelty in this region. On the contrary, Hong Kong, like many Asian cities, is already chock full of Hello Kitty. You can find anything from a Hello Kitty sandwich maker to Hello Kitty jewelry all over the city; thus, it was just a matter of time this cute dim sum restaurant would become a reality.

Offering about 40 choices ranging from HK$42 to HK$238 (US$5 to $30), the new restaurant's menu also has a selection of Hello Kitty-inspired dishes.

The adorable decoration of the restaurant starts outside: Hello Kitty signs in red and gold - two lucky colours in Chinese tradition - adorn the facade of the restaurant while Chinese-style latticed windows present the shape of her bow.

The inside of the restaurant features an explosive combination of Chinese-style decor and Hello Kitty's image all over the place. On chopsticks, chopstick holders, places, bowls, spoons, teapots, ceiling lanterns, wall decor, wine glasses, wine bottles, chairs, you name it, Hello Kitty decor impregnates the every item at the restaurant. There is even Hello Kitty decorations etched into the dining tables - a Kitty-phile-friendly feature that allows diners to gaze at Hello Kitty while eating Hello Kitty food.

Start the Hello Kitty dim sum experience with a spongy custard bun (HK$43 for a basket), followed by shrimp dumplings (HK$48), and a traditional Cantonese sponge cake (HK$48).

If you are a fan of Hello Kitty, you probably know that her favourite food is her mum's homemade apple pie. That is why the restaurant chose apple as a recurrent theme in some dishes. For instance, the sweet and sour pork (HK$98) uses apple instead of the more traditional pineapple.

Another dish that features apple is the Hello Kitty apple chicken rice (HK$108). The rice comes molded resembling the shape of her head, while black beans are there for her eyes, then they use green Chinese leeks tied together for her bow, red pepper for her nose and then eggplant skin for her whiskers. The dish comes with an apple cup full of chicken and vegetables.

As a dessert, one of the options includes a traditional Chinese almond dessert soup (HK$38), topped with a piece of red gelatin in the shape of Hello Kitty.

To add to the restaurants' hits, it uses locally-grown, organic ingredients for some of the dishes. As a matter of fact, the restaurant owner and Hong Kong entrepreneur Man Kwon is using the Hello Kitty restaurant as a platform to encourage healthier lifestyles in Hong Kong. Although he plans to use various healthier options in the future, for now he is using organic whenever possible, natural dyes, less salt and less oil.

The success of the restaurant is also due to its staggering attention to detail and strong commitment to the brand. According to Man, everything - from the food to the decor - had been approved by Sanrio, the Japanese company that owns Hello Kitty brand.

Hello Kitty's creator Sanrio even provided them with "a kind of character training - told us about Hello Kitty, her preferences, her family tree," he adds.

The reason why this restaurant is a success unless previous Hello Kitty restaurants is its perfectionism: some dishes took as many as seven tries before Sanrio green-lighted the final recipe. "The hardest part was getting the proportion of Hello Kitty's features right," says Chan Kwok-Tung, a din sum chef for over three decades. "Otherwise, it'll easily look like a knockoff." Because of its special features, it takes twice as long to make Hello Kitty dim sum compared to regular dim sum.

"Before I joined the company - I knew nothing about Hello Kitty," he says. "I saw it as a challenge but as I spent more time working on it, I grew to like Hello Kitty. She's really cute."

The restaurant has a capacity of 70 people and some dishes are made in limited quantity daily.

If you have an event coming up, you can book the VIP room (named Apple House). This hall features Hello Kitty as China's four ancient beauties in Chinese-style scroll paintings. If you're looking for more news check out Sanrio Facebook page, now over 1 million likes in 2017.

Hong Kong's cultural calendar is jammed to bursting with wonderful events and festivals for you to enjoy. There is truly no end of things to do in this city, regardless of when you happen to be passing through town. Here are a few of the most famous and popular examples.

Chinese New Year

Where else to start but one of the world's most renowned spectacular festivals? Ringing in the New Year in Hong Kong is an experience truly like no other. A 15 day celebration of life and culture, it dwarves all other parties you are likely to come across. It begins on the first day of the new year (about the 14th February) and rocks on until well into March, when the Spring Lantern Festival closes things out. Highlights include the Night Parade, where an army of brilliant performers march through Tsim Sha Tsui, while hundreds of thousands of people line the streets and party. Another recommendation is the Pulse 3D Light Show that takes place in the Open Piazza of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, providing a night of high tech audio visual treats.

WinterFest

As Christmas arrives on the horizon, there are few cities that celebrate the holiday season with quite the fun and glamour of HK. The annual WinterFest hits town and brings with it remarkable decorations, lots of great food and, of course, the New Year's countdown on the 31st December. The Statue Square Christmas Tree is a massive testament to this city's love of spectacle.

The Wine and Dine Festival

Hong Kong is a city in love with food and you can find just about every culinary culture represented somewhere in the town. It should come as no surprise, then, to find that HK plays host to one of the world's most exciting food festivals each year. The Hong Kong Wine and Dine Festival brings together the world's best wine and food and presents it to visitors across a month of fun filled events. From wine tours to street food parties to cookery classes from some of the city's top chefs, there is no end of choice for the fun loving foodie. Perhaps its most famous event, however, is its famous opening party.

The Dragon Boat Carnival

Hundreds of thousands of people attend the Dragon Boat Carnival in Hong Kong each year, where thousands of the world's most famous and feted dragon boat racers come to compete. In the last few years it has become so popular that it is now one of Asia's most fun-filled annual parties. Beer is very much on the menu, thanks in some part to the San Miguel Beerfest that accompanies the races. A wild day out in Victoria Harbour is assured.

Buddha's Birthday

A million miles from the raucous, thronging fervour of the Dragon Boat Carnival is the festival celebrating the birthday of Buddha, founder of Buddhism, which takes place around May each year. Here spirituality, contemplation and tradition are very much the order of the day. At temples across Hong Kong, believers bathe statues of the religion's iconic forefather, purifying their own souls in the process.

Hong Kong continues to be a city obsessed with cinema. Over the years this exceptionally fertile and exciting Asian outpost of film-making has created some of the world's most startling, innovative and influential motion pictures. It has also been the spawning ground for many of the world's most famous and feted movie makers. Here we look at five of Hong Kong's greatest directors.

Tsui Hark

Born in 1951 in Vietnam, Tsui is known throughout the world of cinema as one of the finest and most distinctive writers, directors and producers around. What marks out his career most, perhaps, is that Tsui has managed to maintain his status as a cinematic innovator and agitator, thanks to his work in the politicised New Wave of the late 70s and early 80s, while also going on to create mainstream commercial fare as part of the Cinema City team later on in his career. His huge filmography includes classics of New Wave cinema such as A Better Tomorrow, A Chinese Ghost Story and Once Upon a Time in china, plus large scale blockbusters like Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame and Young Detective Dee.

Ann Hui

Like Tsui Hark, Ann Hui is a celebrated member of what is known as Hong Kong New Wave cinema. Unlike Tsui, however, Hui has never gone into the more clear-cut commercial output that has marked out the former film-maker's career. Hui's work has always maintained a challenging, gritty dynamic, driving home confrontational and frequently controversial messages about prevalent social issues. Amongst her most startling films are Love in Fallen City, which portrays a heart breaking romance during World War 2, Boat People, which follows a journalist's attempts to document the Vietnamese people's recovery from their civil war and the vicious treatment of the North Vietnamese in its fallout, and July Rhapsody, about a literature teacher tempted to enter an affair with one of his pupils in an exclusive high school.

Johnnie To

Johnnie To is not only one of Hong Kong's most famous directors but also one of its most prolific. His directing CV has 59 credits on it, all of them made in a 35 year period, beginning in 1980. That's not even to mention the some 70-odd producer credits he boasts. What is also notable about To is his variety and flexibility as a director. Though western audiences will know him best for his gangster pictures, such as Election, Mad Detective and Drug War, his canon also includes a range of razor sharp comedies like Fat Choi Spirit, romantic melodramas such as Turn Left Turn Right, plus movies that simply defy pigeon holing, like the startling Sparrow, the moody Throw Down and the wonderful Romancing in Thin Air.

John Woo

When a western film fan thinks of Hong Kong directors, the first name that will pop into their heads is likely to be John Woo. Is that fair? Many hardcore fans of HK movies would say no, pointing particularly to Woo's somewhat patchy output since moving to Hollywood in the early 90s as proof that he does not deserve such attention, when somebody like Ann Hui, for example, is unknown to most members of the English speaking audience. However, particularly during his mid-80s period, Woo created some of the most flat-out entertaining action movies available anywhere in the world. The Killers, Hard Boiled, A Better Tomorrow – regardless of how you feel about his later work, these stonewall greats of their genre remain classics to this day.