For nearly four decades, a giant neon cow suspended above a steakhouse in Hong Kong’s Western District was a neighborhood landmark. It was where, if you were giving directions, you told someone to get off the bus or to take the next left. A glowing bovine beacon nearly 10 feet long and 8 feet tall, cantilevered over the street, you couldn’t miss it.

香港——四十年来，香港西区一家牛排餐厅上挂着的巨型霓虹灯奶牛已经成了地标。如果你给人指路，告诉别人在哪儿下车，在哪儿左拐，都会提到它。这头闪闪发光的牛将近10英尺长，8英尺高，悬挂在街头，肯定不会错过。

It was supposed to be an Angus, said Iry Yip, the manager of Sammy’s Kitchen. The sign was designed in 1978 by her father, Sammy Yip, the restaurant’s founder, who at 84 still sits behind the cash register.

森美餐厅的经理叶凤仪(Iry Yip)说，它是一头安格斯牛(Angus)，是她的父亲、餐厅创始人叶联(Sammy Yip)在1978年设计的。他老人家今年84岁，仍然坐在餐厅的收银台后面。

But the sign maker decided that longer legs would look better, hence the world’s only known long-legged, bluish-white Angus, with “Sammy’s Kitchen Ltd.” emblazoned across its flank in green in English and in red in Chinese.

但是制作这个霓虹招牌的师傅觉得牛的腿还是长一点好看，于是它就成了世界上唯一一只长着四条长腿，呈蓝白色的安格斯牛，它的腹部装点着绿色的“Sammy’s Kitchen Ltd.”与红色的“森美餐厅”字样。

But in 2011, the city’s Buildings Department decided the sign was unsafe and ordered it removed. After an unsuccessful campaign to save it, the sign came down in August.

但是2011年，香港屋宇署认为这个招牌不安全，要将它拆掉。要求保留招牌的活动没能成功，今年8月，它被拆除了。

“It feels like something is missing,” Ms. Yip said. “The street has gotten so empty.”

“感觉就像少了什么，”叶凤仪说，“整条街变得空荡荡的。”

Since the mid-20th century, endless towers of flashing, throbbing neon have defined Hong Kong’s landscape as much as Victoria Harbor and the skyline of densely packed high-rises.

自从20世纪中期，无数跳跃闪烁的霓虹灯便装点着香港的街景、维多利亚湾，以及高楼大厦林立的天际线。

“When you think of Hong Kong and visual culture, one of the first things that comes to the fore is neon signs,” said Aric Chen, curator of M+, a museum that is collecting images of Hong Kong’s neon signs online and some of the signs themselves as they are retired, including the neon cow.

“一想起香港与它的视觉文化，首先跃入脑海的就会有它的霓虹招牌，”M+博物馆的策展人陈伯康(Aric Chen)说，这家博物馆专门在线收集香港的霓虹招牌照片，也收集一些被拆除的霓虹招牌，比如森美餐厅的霓虹奶牛。

The Hong Kong immortalized in the films of Wong Kar-wai, the director of “In the Mood for Love” and “Chungking Express,” is awash in neon, Mr. Chen said.

在《花样年华》与《重庆森林》的导演王家卫的影片中，那个沐浴在霓虹灯中的香港得以永远留存，陈伯康说道。

“If his representations of Hong Kong in the popular imaginations are seminal, which I think they are,” he said, “you can’t separate that image from the neon ambient glow.”

“我认为他呈现的香港在大众想像中具有深远的影响，”他说，“那个香港的形象与霓虹灯的光辉密不可分。”

But the neon of Hong Kong’s streets is dimming.

但是如今，香港街头的霓虹灯光愈来愈黯淡。

Neon has declined rapidly since the 1990s, sign makers and experts say, as building regulations here have tightened and new signs are made of LEDs, which lack neon’s warmth but are brighter and less expensive to maintain.

自从20世纪90年代，霓虹灯开始迅速消失，招牌制作师傅和有关专家们说，香港的建筑规划愈来愈严格，新的标志都是用LED灯制作，它没有霓虹灯的暖意，但是更加明亮，保养费用也较为低廉。

The Hong Kong Buildings Department has no record of how many neon signs remain in the city or how many existed at their peak, but the department acknowledges that it removes hundreds of signs a year for failure to meet code. Signs are removed for safety and structural reasons, or when they are abandoned or unauthorized.

香港屋宇署没有这个城市目前还剩多少霓虹招牌的统计数字，也没有它在全盛时期的准确数字。但该机构承认，它在一年内拆除了数百个不符合相关规定的霓虹招牌。拆除不是出于安全与建筑结构原因，就是因为安装时未经许可，或者招牌本身已被弃置不用。

In a workshop with gray, peeling walls, Lau Wan, one of the last of Hong Kong’s neon sign makers, heated a glass tube on a naked flame, effortlessly bending it into the Chinese character for Polytechnic University.

刘稳是香港最后一批霓虹招牌制作师傅之一，在墙皮斑驳脱落的车间里，他用明火给一个玻璃管加热，一边轻松地将它弯曲成“香港理工大学”的中文字样。

Mr. Lau, who has been making neon signs by hand since 1957, helped turn Hong Kong nights into blazing, garish days. He created one of the city’s largest and most famous signs, the red-and-white Panasonic billboard that covered an entire building on Nathan Road from 1973 to 1995.

1957年入行后一直靠手工制作霓虹灯的刘稳，和其他工匠制作的霓虹光管一起，把香港的夜晚变成了五光十色、令人目眩的白昼。他的作品包括香港最大也最著名的霓虹招牌之一——红白两色的“乐声牌”(Panasonic)广告招牌，从1973年到1995年，它占据了弥敦道上一座大厦的一整面外墙。

According to Guinness World Records, another Hong Kong sign, a 210-by-55-foot ad for Marlboro cigarettes, was the world’s largest in the 1980s. It was eclipsed here in 1999 by a giant dragon sign, about 299 feet by 151 feet, Leila Wang, a Guinness spokeswoman, said.

根据吉尼斯世界纪录，20世纪80年代，210英尺×55英尺的香港万宝路香烟霓虹广告牌曾是世界上最大的霓虹招牌。吉尼斯女发言人莱拉·王(Leila Wang，音译)说，1999年，它的纪录被香港的另一座霓虹招牌超过，那是一座299英尺×151英尺的巨龙招牌。

Now, at 75, Mr. Lau said he feared that his craft was dying.

75岁的刘稳说，他担心这门手艺会失传。

“I want it preserved, but I probably won’t be able to see it,” he said.

“我希望它可以保存下去，但我可能看不到了，”他说。

His colleague, Wu Chi-kai, 47, is the second-youngest of the nearly dozen neon sign makers left in the city, and there are no apprentices being trained for the next generation.

他的同事、47岁的胡智楷是香港第二年轻的霓虹招牌师傅，但在这里仅存的十来位师傅中，大家都无徒可授。

“Just like every other industry, if the business is good, there must be new blood,” Mr. Wu said. “If no one is joining the industry, the reason is the lack of business.”

“和所有行业一样，如果生意兴隆，就会有新鲜血液，”胡智楷说，“如果没有人加入这个行业，那就是没有生意做。”

Neon was a Western import that quickly gained its own vocabulary in China, first in Shanghai, then Hong Kong, combining the ancient Chinese art of calligraphy with modern advertising.

霓虹灯是西方的舶来品，但是很快在中国发展起新的形式，先是在上海，然后是在香港，它把古老的中国书法艺术与现代商业广告结合在一起。

Before computer fonts took over, master calligraphers drafted the Chinese characters, making sketches that were traced by sign makers.

在电脑字体一统天下之前，霓虹招牌上的中文字由书法大师起草，再由师傅按照这个底稿进行制作。

Fung Siu-wa, 66, calls himself the champion of the character outlining game. He still has no computer in his office, where the most advanced piece of technology is a television. Sipping a cup of black tea in his black silk tang suit, he said the work involved spending time learning the shapes of the words, understanding the structures of the characters and catering to the needs of particular industries.

66岁的冯兆华（Fung Siu-wa）自称为勾勒字体的冠军。他的办公室里仍然没有电脑，最先进的东西就是一台电视。他身穿黑色丝绸唐装，品着红茶，说自己的工作就是研究中文方块字的形状结构，以便适应不同行业的需要。

“Every industry has different preference for typeface,” he said. “Restaurants and hotels like more honest-looking characters, while more artistic businesses like salons, nightclubs and karaoke prefer ethereal-looking ones that give a romantic and relaxing sensation.”

“不同的行业喜欢不同的字体，”他说。“饭馆和酒店喜欢看上去更老实的字体，而沙龙、夜店、卡拉OK那些比较艺术化的行业更喜欢浪漫、轻松的感觉。”

Certain tropes have developed, such as the badge-shaped sign that every Hong Kong resident knows as the logo for pawn shops. The design resembles a bat holding a coin in its mouth. The Chinese word for bat sounds like the word for fortune, and the coin symbolizes wealth.

这个行当还发展出了特定的修辞，比如所有香港人都知道，某种徽章形状的招牌是典当行的标识，上面的图案是一只蝙蝠嘴里叼着一个铜板。在中文里，“蝠”与“富”谐音，而铜板象征着钱财。

What the medium itself represents has changed over time. When Hong Kong first fell for neon in the 1920s, it was an indicator of urban sophistication and prosperity.

作为媒介，霓虹灯的意义也随着时间的变化而变化。20世纪20年代，香港刚刚迷上霓虹灯的时候，它曾是城市品位与繁荣的象征。

By the 1960s and ‘70s, when some neighborhoods here were as chockablock with neon as Times Square, it was considered gaudy, if not headache-inducing. By the 1980s, neon signs were often associated with urban decay and red-light districts.

60年代到70年代，香港的一些地方开始像纽约的时报广场一样布满了霓虹灯，人们觉得它们就算不是让人头疼，至少也是过于花哨俗气。80年代，霓虹招牌经常和城市的堕落与红灯区联系在一起。

Today, as they grow scarcer, they have become retro-chic artifacts and objects of nostalgia. Old signs are purchased as folk art by collectors and museums, while modern artists incorporate neon in their work.

如今，随着霓虹招牌日渐稀少，它们开始成为用于复古与怀旧的东西。收藏家和博物馆把老的霓虹招牌当做民间艺术收购，现代艺术家们则把霓虹灯融入自己的作品。

Mr. Chen of M+ says the signs should remain in their natural habitat, suspended above Hong Kong’s busy streets. But his museum has acquired signs to save them from the junk heap. M+, which for now has no space of its own, hopes to display them when its building is finished in 2019.

M+的陈伯康说，霓虹招牌应该保留在原来的地方，悬挂在香港繁忙街道的上方。不过，他的博物馆也在从垃圾堆里抢救它们。M+如今还没有自己的空间，要到2019年场馆落成后，才能公开展示自己收藏的霓虹招牌。

Plenty of handmade neon remains in the city for those who notice it. Mr. Chen says most residents do not.

香港还是有很多手工制作的霓虹灯，根本无人注意。陈伯康说，大多数居民不会留意身边的霓虹招牌。

“Neon signs are so familiar to people in Hong Kong that, of course, they almost don’t need to think about it,” he said. It often takes a foreign eye, he said, to see the beauty.

“香港人非常熟悉这些霓虹招牌，所以多数人理所当然地不会多想它们，”他说。大多数时候，异乡人的眼睛才能看到它们的美。

The sign makers, however, downplay any artistic pretension. As their work began to blanket the city, art was not the point.

不过，霓虹招牌制作师们并不重视艺术化的虚饰。他们的作品遍布全城的时候，艺术根本不重要。

“The only requirement at that time was to be able to immediately catch someone’s attention among a street full of signs,” Mr. Wu said. “That was the standard.”

“当时满街都是招牌，唯一的要求就是，你的招牌能够立刻吸引人们的注意力，” 胡智楷说，“这是行业的标准。”

Most of the work today, Mr. Wu said, consists of indoor decorative signs for boutiques, bars and restaurants.

胡智楷说，如今，他们的大多数作品是为精品店、酒吧和饭馆制作室内装饰性的招牌，也包括室内装潢。

These pieces may be lovely, and may even be art, but they are obscure. The neon signs Mr. Wu and Mr. Lau once made were seen by a city of seven million.

这些作品或许很可爱，甚至堪称艺术品，但它们不为人所知。然而胡智楷和刘稳以前制作的那些招牌可以被整个城市的800万人看到。

“When foreigners came to Hong Kong, looking at the scenery of the narrow streets, and were stunned by the neon signs, it made us sign makers quite proud,” Mr. Lau said. “We worked so hard for Hong Kong and were actually making contributions.”

“外国人来到香港，看到狭窄街头登上的景象，到处都是霓虹招牌，总会让他们惊叹不已，这让我们招牌师傅非常骄傲，”刘稳说。“我们为香港拼命工作，真是做了不少的贡献。”