Hong Kong's Most Fanatic Collector, Tarlan Amigh, and Her Love for Old Hong Kong

Tarlan Amigh’s love for Hong Kong sprouted in the weeks leading up to her Year 12 high school prom night in the 1990s, studying and living in the suburbs of Brisbane, Australia, when she asked her mother to buy her a traditional cheongsam to wear for the big night.

What she described as a sudden urge to dress up like in the folk female garb of 1960s Hong Kong had grown years later when she found herself moving to the harbour city at the turn of the millennium to begin a new life.

Twenty-two years later and married with three children, Tarlan’s undying passion for all things Hong Kong has transformed into a blooming Instagram enterprise, documenting, and selling the city’s rarest, unique finds of colonial British Hong Kong and dying trades under the popular @hongkongmadethis account.

With an online following of over 3,600 expat, local, and overseas Hong Kongers, Tarlan explained to The Beat Asia in an interview about her passion for archiving the old Hong Kong and why it is special to share with the world.

Tarlan arrived at the shores of Hong Kong in early 2000 for a career in regional marketing for a new broadband tech venture in Asia. “This just ticks every box,” Tarlan said about her move to Hong Kong. “It is 24/7 and everything is going on. I am quite a night owl, so I love the fact that the city is alive the whole time.”

She soon began to meet fellow Aussies abroad working in the city, forming a connection to the Aussie expatriate circles, met her Australian-Chinese husband and started a family years later where she called home.

“[Working in Hong Kong] I felt very spoilt for choice and happy in the corporate world. The city is highly creative and entrepreneurial, so as an ideas person I was flourishing,” Tarlan told The Beat Asia in an interview at her home in Pokfulam.

It was at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong that tempted Tarlan to explore her creativity within the confines of her immediate surroundings and environment, beyond her corporate career.

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In June 2020, Tarlan kickstarted her account @hongkongmadethis, an online and interactive Instagram journal, she said, documenting both the old-age colonial British and Chinese relics of a past Hong Kong, and the dying trades and street-level happenings hidden from common sight in today’s Hong Kong.

“[The beginning and summer of the pandemic in 2020] was bit of a slow time. With a lot of people trapped in, people began exploring the local. With people here and being more inward,” it was an opportune time to charge her COVID passion project to document a side of Hong Kong that is forgotten or overlooked.

She created the account, as Tarlan described, to ultimately “validate her hoarding,” – or collecting – of historical Hong Kong relics, papers, trinkets, and products, a personal passion of hers to uncover the “Made in Hong Kong” and golden era of the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s that many are not familiar with.

Tarlan began sourcing local items from ages prior to the 1997 political handover and capturing the beauty of colour and age on her Instagram. 

Her summer collection would include videos of streetscapes in Central and north Kowloon, dainty postcards of 1960s Hong Kong, Hong Kong children’s books dating to the 1970s, vintage matchboxes of former expat-loved restaurants, and “‘Made in Hong Kong”’ products, a complete rarity in 2022 Hong Kong.

I felt a little bit of pang of things changing very fast [in Hong Kong] and the uniqueness disappearing. I felt this need to document as much as I could of a time when everything was made in Hong Kong and treasure the great things made in and about Hong Kong.”

“[The account] is for reminiscing about the old age of Hong Kong and exploring Hong Kong before globalisation before another global factor wipes it out.”

With an increased following and a commitment to preserving the sights, sounds, and things of Hong Kong, Tarlan began sourcing products online from international sellers in November 2020 to bolster her personal collection.

She purchased Hong Kong travel books from 1980, Made in Hong Kong girl dolls from the ‘40s and ‘50s, American and European vintage adverts for airplane and tours to Hong Kong in the 1970s, postcards and posters of a Hong Kong before the skyscraper, and fabrics decorated with British flags and colonial patches.

A majority of Tarlan’s historical collection, numbering in the hundreds and all stored in her home office, is sourced primarily online and forwarded from the United States and United Kingdom.

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“With documenting the old Hong Kong,” Tarlan said, “I love the thrill of the chase, hunting stuff down, outsourcing, and collecting it. I am inspired from great people in Hong Kong and ex-Hong Kongers living abroad on what they want documented.”

“The commentary and conversations that come out of my collection are very emotional and raw.”

Tarlan’s stylistic choices in furniture, paintings, and relics at her home in Pokfulam see a Chinoiserie and brashly Cantonese influence. The foyer, living room, house staircases, and home office act as a temporary and ever-changing museum of Tarlan’s internationally and Hong Kong-sourced historical relics, illustrations, and paintings.

Walking into her home office, her devotion to the preservation of pre-1997 memorabilia is evident. “There is a coolness factor behind the colonial Hong Kong, prior to the 1997 [handover], with the mass production in Hong Kong where everything was made in Hong Kong,” she said.

Her home office holds upwards of 300 posters, books, toys, dolls, postcards, matchboxes, magazines, government materials, and novels dating from 1997 all the way to 1900.

Tarlan says she connects to 1960s and ‘70s Hong Kong the most. Thus, a large part of her collection consists of English relics from that period.

“It was just a simpler time of what I imagined Hong Kong to be in its prime bustle. [I love] the atmosphere, sense of community, social life, and weirdness of colonial expat and local spheres of life. I think that would have been interesting to witness.”

Her advocacy work to document Hong Kong has allowed Tarlan to tighten bonds with her local Hong Kong friends, of whom are passionate and pleased about her attempt to relive and record history.

Unable to speak Cantonese, she has a rota of local speaking friends she “bothers” - a lawyer, shopkeepers, businessmen, housewives – for translations and communication with local Hong Kong people and Cantonese text.

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Whilst Tarlan uses @hongkongmadethis to explore the untouched, unique Hong Kong relics found across the world and the ancient shopfronts and street scenes of Hong Kong, she runs her second account, @myteyehk, to manage the sale of select pieces within her collection.

Both accounts allow her followers, abroad and local, Hong Kong and ex-residents, to purchase one-of-a-kind relics and products. Tarlan said the connection that comes with interacting with her audience is what motivates her continued exploration into historic Hong Kong.

“I love my fans’ stories and their questions [about my collection]. Some people are dying to tell me their stories about Hong Kong, old and new.”

“I think that there is a real pride of Hong Kong; having spent time in Hong Kong you have got a connection to the city. I love it and there is a theme and energy of like, yeah, I am a Hongkonger.”

Tarlan continues to source and upload intriguing and unique relics of Hong Kong’s past onto her Instagram account, but still has a future set to expand her sights.

“I want to curate and create a gallery space in the future to hold these eclectic and beautiful pieces,” Tarlan told The Beat Asia. “I really would love for people to be able to look at my collection all the time, for it to be permanent.”