What is this symbol?
What is that?
You should be able to see this kind of neon light symbols all the time when travelling around Hong Kong. They are the symbol of traditional Chinese pawn shops.
Meaning
This symbol is actually a bat hanging upside down and holding a coin. The bat signifies fortune (fortune & bat have similar pronunciation in Chinese) and the coin signifies benefits.
The words within the "bat" part is usually the name of the pawn shop. The word 押 in the "coin" part is the verb of "pawn" in Chinese.
Before Chinese people liked to buy assets like gold or gems because they can get loans from pawn shops when they need cash urgently. Therefore pawn shops were everywhere in Hong Kong and there were so many pawn shops in last century that people used to describe "we have more pawn shops than rice shops in Hong Kong", considering how important and common rice is to Chinese people.
Thus this symbol became one of the local icons in Hong Kong. Also that's why HongKonguide took it as inspiration and made it as our logo, and hope that we can bring fortune to everyone.
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