When tugboats towed Jumbo Floating Restaurant away from Hong Kong final week, the large vessel’s proprietor despatched the general public its “greatest needs for a brighter future.”
That future now lies on the backside of the South China Sea.
The 260-foot, three-story eatery capsized and sank because it was being towed by means of deep water over the weekend, its proprietor, Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises, mentioned on Monday. Nobody was injured, it mentioned.
Jumbo’s loss reverberated throughout Hong Kong, a Chinese language territory the place the neon-lit colossus — constructed within the model of an imperial palace — had sat in the identical harbor for almost half a century. Generations of Hong Kongers celebrated weddings and minimize enterprise offers there over Cantonese fare like crispy pork stomach and wok-baked mud crab. For many individuals within the former British colony, the restaurant symbolized a interval of native historical past extra optimistic than the current.
Jumbo’s demise comes at a time of immense upheaval in Hong Kong, one which started when anti-government protests convulsed the town for months in 2019. That prompted the Chinese language authorities in 2020 to impose a strong nationwide safety legislation on the territory that has since eroded what was left of its democratic establishments.
The turmoil continued by means of the pandemic, as border closures and social distancing measures worn out 1000’s of mom-and-pop outlets and threatened a few of the metropolis’s best-known companies, together with the favored Star Ferry.
At a time when the Star Ferry and different visible icons of Hong Kong are beneath menace, “it appears as if its most seen symbols are all disappearing one after the other,” mentioned Louisa Lim, the creator of the ebook “Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong.”
“That, mixed with the large political adjustments introduced in by the nationwide safety laws, depart Hong Kongers questioning what shall be left of their metropolis,” she added.
Jumbo was opened by the Macau on line casino tycoon Stanley Ho in 1976 and was for years a part of a fancy referred to as Jumbo Kingdom that included a smaller floating restaurant, Tai Pak. The bigger vessel’s opening was delayed by a 1971 fireplace that killed 34 individuals and injured dozens of others, according to The South China Morning Post.
A lot of celebrities visited Jumbo Kingdom over time, together with the actor Tom Cruise, the businessman Richard Branson and Queen Elizabeth II of Britain. Jumbo Floating Restaurant additionally featured within the 1974 James Bond movie “The Man with the Golden Gun” and several other native blockbusters.
In “Contagion,” a 2011 thriller a few international pandemic, a pivotal scene was shot on the restaurant: Gwyneth Paltrow’s character turns into the pandemic’s first sufferer by contracting a lethal virus from a chef.
Whilst large residential towers sprang up round Jumbo, its garish neon signal and imperial-style structure nonetheless dominated the skyline round Aberdeen Harbor, on the southwest aspect of Hong Kong Island. And it was nonetheless a spot the place Hong Kongers went to make reminiscences; Ms. Lim, the author, wrote on Twitter final week that going there had been an annual ritual for her household.
By 2020, although, Jumbo had misplaced tens of millions of {dollars}, and Hong Kong’s pandemic restrictions on eating and tourism compelled the enterprise to shut. Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises mentioned on the time that it couldn’t afford to maintain up with upkeep and inspection prices, and it supplied to donate Jumbo to a neighborhood theme park for gratis.
Later that yr, Hong Kong’s chief govt, Carrie Lam, mentioned that the federal government would cooperate with the theme park and native nonprofit organizations in “the rebirth of the floating restaurant.” However the plan fizzled, and Ms. Lam mentioned final month that the federal government wouldn’t make investments taxpayer cash within the restaurant, which had collected losses of almost $13 million over almost a decade.
Jumbo was towed away from Hong Kong on June 14. Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises declined on the time to say the place it was going, although the corporate had beforehand mentioned that the boat could be moved out of the town for upkeep and storage.
In an announcement, the corporate mentioned that Jumbo “started to tip” on Sunday because it was passing by the Paracel Islands, a sequence of disputed islands within the South China Sea the place China, Vietnam and Taiwan lay territorial claims. It mentioned the accident occurred in an space the place the water depth is over 1,000 meters, or 3,280 toes, “making it extraordinarily troublesome to hold out salvage works.”
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Stephen Ng, a spokesman for Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises, declined to touch upon hypothesis on-line that the boat may need been scuttled for insurance coverage functions. There was no instant proof to recommend foul play.
In its assertion on Monday, the corporate mentioned it was “now getting additional particulars of the accident from the towing firm.” It didn’t identify the towing firm.
Not everybody favored Jumbo. Ho-fung Hung, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins College who has studied Hong Kong politics, referred to as it “self-orientalizing” and mentioned it was not price getting nostalgic over.
“Overpriced dangerous meals for clueless vacationers searching for awkward exoticism,” he wrote on Twitter last week. “Get misplaced and don’t come again.”
However for some residents, dropping Jumbo was a part of a sample by which issues they love about their hometown have vanished for the reason that 2019 protests. Just a few social media customers described the sinking this week as a “nail within the coffin” for the town. Others referred to as it a “burial at sea.”
One in style illustration making the rounds on social media confirmed Jumbo sinking to the underside of the ocean as fish swim by.
Within the illustration by Ah To — the nom de plume of a political cartoonist who not too long ago emigrated from Hong Kong, citing the “nice psychological stress” he would endure if he stayed — there are two statues on the seafloor. One reveals a blindfolded lady holding a scale of justice that lies askance. The opposite is a girl who holds a torch and resembles the Goddess of Democracy, a protest image that was faraway from a Hong Kong college campus final yr.
Austin Ramzy contributed reporting.
