Ingrid and I got our bank accounts set up today at Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp and were in agreement that it feels good to have her college fund guarded by such fierce statues as these lions located out in front of the HSBC building. These are one of 3 sets of statues, the others residing in Shanghai and London's Trafalgar Square. They are iconic HK images, even gracing several of city's currency notes.
The lion pictured actually still has bullet holes from the Battle of HK when the Japanese took the city during WWII. The Japanese shipped the lions back to the home country to be melted into munitions but they were somehow spared, only to be discovered after the war intact when they were returned to their cages in HK. Its also by far the coolest building at which I've ever banked. It looks like a machine out of Star Wars, with a steel exoskeleton, no central support structure, and a grand escalator that ascends from the noisy street level through a glass undercarriage to the quiet sanctum of the lobby floor. Very cool stuff.
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