Has it sunk? Has it capsized? Is it still floating somewhere off the waters off Paracel Islands in the South China Sea detached from its tug boat? What exactly is the final fate of Jumbo, the iconic floating restaurant that has been moored in Hong Kong’s Aberdeen Harbour since 1976, serving as a backdrop in Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun and playing host to the likes of the Queen (although technically these moments took place on Jumbo’s sister restaurant, Tai Pak, which is currently an abandoned ghost shipwreck still moored in the harbour).
Woolly misinformation aside, the news that Jumbo is potentially unsalvageable has hit Hong Kong hard. A sunken Jumbo is the perfect metaphor for Hong Kong’s perceived demise as it stutters out of pandemic restrictions alongside the ongoing tightening of Chinese national security laws. It has spawned memes of the mock-Imperial Palace vessel sinking beneath a doomed Hong Kong skyline. It sits in a celestial heaven with a halo floating above its famous green and red façade as imagined by IG account @SurrealHK. It is now being forensically mourned as authorities call for a clear explanation as to what has happened.
