Hong Kong Commercial History: The Brands, People, and Institutions That Defined a City

Hong Kong's commercial history is less documented than its political one. These articles attempt to correct that, modestly: forensic histories of the brands and institutions that defined post-war Hong Kong, biographies of the people who built them, and the occasional street-level memory of what it felt like to be there. The subjects range from retail empires to forgotten hawkers, connected by a city that has always been better at reinventing itself than at remembering what it replaced.

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• ℹ️ New here? Start with Maria Lee’s biography

A recurring thread runs through several of these histories: 1998. In a single year, Hong Kong lost Maria's Bakery, KPS Video Express, and China Motor Bus (CMB) - three institutions from three different industries, each undone by a combination of the Asian Financial Crisis, the handover transition, and forces specific to their own stories. Their collapse marked the end of a particular Hong Kong: the one many of us grew up in.

Maria Lee, and Maria's Bakery

Maria Lee: The Woman Who Built Hong Kong’s Sweetest Empire

Built a bakery empire stretching from Kowloon to Manhattan, lost everything at 68, and repaid every creditor. The definitive English-language biography.

Link: https://www.bulsuk.com/2026/03/maria-lee-extraordinary-life-of-hong.html

Maria's Bakery: a history of the rise, fall, and revival of a Hong Kong institution

From 1966 founding to 60+ shops, the 1984 Cake Run, the 1998 collapse, and the revival. How Hong Kong's most beloved bakery brand lived twice.

Link: https://www.bulsuk.com/2025/12/marias-bakery-short-history-of-iconic.html

Maria Lee (李曾超群): Hong Kong’s Queen of Cakes - A Biography

The full detailed biography of the Queen of Cakes.

Link: https://www.bulsuk.com/2026/05/maria-lee-biography.html

KPS Video Express

KPS Video Express (金獅影視快線) was a major Hong Kong retail chain, selling and renting VHS tapes, LaserDiscs, Video CDs, and later DVDs. They also sold computer software. It opened in 1981, expanded throughout Hong Kong and later Taiwan, before collapsing in 1998 from combined pressures from regulator changes, high prices from distributor oligopolies, and the Asian Economic Crisis.

Why did KPS Video Express Fail? Rewinding Failure in Hong Kong's Video Market

A forensic breakdown of how one of Hong Kong's biggest retail empires collapsed under distributor power, regulatory change, piracy, and the Asian Financial Crisis — all at once.

Link: https://www.bulsuk.com/2025/12/why-did-kps-video-express-fail.html

KPS Video Express Membership Card Recreated: Welcome back to the 1990s

A recreation of the membership card and documentation of its evolution across the years. A primary source for the KPS archive.

Link: https://www.bulsuk.com/2025/11/kps-video-express-membership-card.html

KPS Video Express Receipts and Terms of Service

Two surviving receipts from the rental era, scanned and preserved. The paper trail of a vanished institution.

Link: https://www.bulsuk.com/2011/06/kps-video-express-receipts-and-terms-of.html

The Long Lost Logo of KPS Video Express

How the logo was reconstructed from near-nothing, and why it was worth doing.

Link: https://www.bulsuk.com/2010/12/long-lost-logo-of-kps-video-express.html

KPS Video Express: A Hong Kong Institution

The article that started the KPS research project. Where the archive began.

Link: https://www.bulsuk.com/2011/01/kps-video-express-hong-kong-institution.html

The History of KPS Video Express - Wikipedia Article

A copy of the original article I wrote for Wikipedia.

Link: https://www.bulsuk.com/2011/01/the-history-of-kps-video-express.html

Hong Kong Memories

Not everything worth remembering was a brand or a business. These are street-level memories of what Hong Kong felt, and sounded like: the things that don't make it into official histories because nobody 
thought to write them down at the time.

The old man who sold tofu on Caine Road

A portrait of a street hawker whose bicycle and bamboo bucket defined a decade of Mid-Levels street life, and the licensing changes that ended it.

Link: https://www.bulsuk.com/2012/11/the-old-man-who-sold-tofu-on-caine-road.html

China Motor Bus (CMB) Memories

Rattling blue double-deckers, non-air-conditioned, before 1998 ended it. A sensory record of Hong Kong Island's CMB bus era.

Link: https://www.bulsuk.com/2012/03/china-motor-bus-hong-kong-i-remember.html

The Urban Council Public Libraries in City Hall

Brown cardboard library cards, CD-ROM encyclopaedias, and weekend reading before the Central Library existed. A reconstruction from memory.

Link: https://www.bulsuk.com/2012/09/urban-council-public-libraries-in-city.html