Noon Day Gun

    

The noon day gun (午炮)

Here in Causeway Bay one of the famous tourist sights is the noonday gun (午炮). Going off at twelve o'clock the noon day gun is fired quite often. People can donate over hk$ 33,000 (us$ 5,000) to fire the cannon and get a souvenir. The noon day gun goes quite far back in history in the 1860's. The jardines would fire the gun when a Jardines tai-pan would arrive by sea. This tradition went on until a senior british officer came in and didn't know of the tradition. As a result the jardines had to fire the cannon every twelve o'clock as a penalty. The cannon, in 1941 was lost to the Japenese occupation but after british forces regained Hong Kong the gun was replaced with a six pound gun and the gun was operating again in 1947. As time went on there were many complaints so the six pound gun was replaced with a three pound gun.