Wing On
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wing On (Chinese: 永安) is a department store in Hong Kong. It was founded in 1907, and it is the second Chinese-owned department store in Hong Kong. It has five outlets providing 360,000 square feet (33,400 square metre) of shopping space.
Its founders are brothers Kwok Lok (郭樂) and Kwok Chuen (郭泉), who first started the Wing On fruit store in Australia in 1897. Kwok Cheun then returned to Hong Kong to start the Wing On Company after earning enough money.
The branch at the Wing On Centre was prominently featured in the climactic sequence to the 1985 Jackie Chan film Police Story.
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[edit] Wing On in Shanghai
Wing On also had a branch in Shanghai. The Shanghai branch was opened in 1918 on Nanking Road (today's Nanjing Road), and was at the time one of the "big four" department stores of Shanghai. The store occupied two prominent buildings. The distinctive original building stood opposite from the (then) Sincere department store. An extension was built next to it in the 1930's. After the communist revolution in China (1949), the store was nationalised, and traded under various names. In 2005, it resumed the Chinese version of the Wing On name (Chinese: 永安; pinyin: Yǒng'ān). However, the store is owned by a separate company to Wing On, called "Yongan Department Store Co Ltd", a state-owned company. This company does not use the "Wing On" name in its English translations. [1] The exterior of the original store was restored to its appearance during the Wing On period. However, the interior has been drastically refurbished. The store has also changed its market orientation, focussing almost exclusively on clothing, with a small department in watches and other accessories.
[edit] References
- 趣談今昔香港 (ISBN 962-14-1750-3)
