Princess Theatre, Kowloon: Site of the Beatles' 1964 Hong Kong Shows

The Beatles played their only Hong Kong concerts at the Princess Theatre on Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, on 9 June 1964, two shows with Jimmie Nicol standing in for Ringo Starr. The cinema closed in 1973 and was demolished. The Mira hotel complex now covers the site, and there is no Beatles plaque.

One day in Kowloon

The Beatles flew in on 8 June 1964, early in their world tour. Ringo Starr was in hospital in Britain, so Jimmie Nicol sat at the drums. The two concerts took place the next day, 9 June, at the Princess Theatre. Some tour lists give 8 and 9 June; the eighth was the arrival.

The Maori Hi-Five and Sounds Incorporated were on the bill. Tickets cost about a week's wage, well beyond most teenagers, and a large share went unsold. Culture Plus reports that the promoter handed spare tickets to servicemen, so uniforms filled many seats. The band stayed across Tsim Sha Tsui at the President Hotel.

Local histories often date English-language rock in Hong Kong from this day, as the start of the band scene that later fed Cantonese pop. The South China Morning Post has doubted how far that holds, going by what people who were there remember.

The theatre, 1952 to 1973

The Princess opened in December 1952 at 130 Nathan Road, on the corner of Kimberley Road. It had 1,726 seats and showed first-run English-language films for the Hong Kong and Kowloon Entertainment Company. On 3 October 1970 the building was sold to a hotel group. For its last two years it staged Mandarin variety shows and musicals, and it closed in 1973. Sources give either 1 January or 23 March as the final day.

What stands there now

The theatre was pulled down and the site absorbed into the Mira hotel complex, known until 2009 as the Miramar. A shopping plaza on the site took the Princess name as a nod to the old cinema.

No plaque, panel or sign about the Beatles has been recorded at the corner. Anyone walking Nathan Road today will see shops and the hotel, with nothing to say what happened there in 1964.

Hong Kong's other Lennon connection is the Lennon Wall at Admiralty. Two weeks after Kowloon the tour reached New Zealand, where the band stayed at Wellington's Hotel St George.