Wong Tai-keung still climbs the rusted ladder behind his shop on Tung Choi Street every Tuesday, rain or shine, to tune the amber neon serpent that coils above the wet market. He's seventy-one. The sign was his father's work — installed in 2049, the year before the evacuation zones were drawn. "The argon pressure drops in monsoon season," he told me, wiping phosphor dust from his hands onto a rag that was older than I am. "You can hear the flicker before anyone sees it."
The Color of Decay
There is a specific shade of amber that only aging neon produces — a kind of tired orange between rust and honey, dimmer at the edges where the tube walls have thinned from decades of sputtered electrode metal. Wong calls it gwong can, "light residue." It bathes every photograph taken here after sunset, and it is disappearing one sign at a time.