Symphony of Lights

To start off your night-time entertainment you can't do much better than the Symphony of Lights, in which the buildings of Hong Kong Island put on a musical performance for spectators across on the waterfront in Kowloon. The buildings in Central District, which by day are sober structures housing the headquarters of international banks and electronics giants, reveal their alter egos at night as they power themselves up and you see that they are decked out from head to toe in neon with huge floodlights on their roofs.

The fifteen-minute show happens every evening at 20:00. The towers put on their very best performance, each one trying to be more sparkly and have more colours and ridiculous lighting effects than the others. The new International Finance Centre (IFC) towers don't join in with the whole neon thing—at first glance it seems that their architect rose above the pressure to make them flash and instead chose to bathe them in simple white light. But no, instead of neon they have powerful green lasers on their roofs, and it seems that they just can't resist joining in once the fun starts. After the climax of the show the buildings go back to normal as abruptly as they began, as if nothing had happened.

The assembled crowd couldn't help but applaud. The show was really good. Video below.