Uncle Umbrella

They called him Umbrella Boy when he started his business. After repairing umbrellas on the same city block for over fifty years, he became Uncle Umbrella, a man who earned the respect and affection of his neighbors and customers.

Hong Kong is a throw-away society. When it rains, umbrellas are discarded everywhere, and some of them are not even broken. Hong Kong is also a society that conserves, stubbornly holding on to values seemingly incongruous to its modern façade. In a land where new umbrellas from department stores often cost less than a repair job, Uncle Umbrella is at once an anachronism in a culture of consumption and an embodiment of Hong Kong’s amazing ability to assimilate the new with the old. In the humble act of tinkering with torn fabric and rusted metal, Uncle Umbrella and his customers are partners in a quest for that fabled province where past and present, East and West converge.

Uncle Umbrella was filmed during the reunification of Hong Kong and mainland China, on July 1, 1997.