The pedestrian underpass from the Star Ferry concourse emerges into Statue Square, heart of the late nineteenth century colony, though now uncomfortably bisected by Chater Road. The northern segment is bounded to the east by the members-only Hong Kong Club, housed inside a modern, bow-fronted tower; this is faced by the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which hides an opulent interior inside a dull, box-like casing.

Across Chater Road in the southern half of Statue Square, the statue itself is that of Sir Thomas Jackson, a nineteenth-century manager of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. This area is a meeting point for the territory’s 200,000 Filipina amahs, or maids, who descend en masse on Central each Sunday to sociably picnic, shop, read, sing and have their hair cut.

The most important of Central’s surviving colonial buildings sits on the eastern side of Statue Square. Built in 1898, the former Supreme Court (now the LEGCO building - home of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council), a granite edifice with dome and colonnade, is the only colonial structure left in the square. This is the SAR’s nearest equivalent to a parliamentary building, though its locally elected members must be approved by the Chinese authorities in Beijing, and so it hardly constitutes an independent government.