StillRed.Still Running.

Fifteen years on and Hong Kong's iconic red taxis haven't changed a bit — and that's exactly the point.

There's a moment, stepping out of Hong Kong MTR into the wall of humid air and noise, where everything hits you at once. The signs. The crowd. The smell of something frying somewhere close. And then, cutting through it all, a flash of red pulling up to the kerb.

We first saw them fifteen years ago when we visited on our honeymoon, tumbling out of the airport into a city that felt like it had been running at full speed forever. We hadn't been to Hong Kong before. The red taxi that took us into the city was the first thing that made it feel real. Coming back now, with the kids in a world that barely resembles the one we left, those same taxis are still out there. Same red. Same shape. Same drivers who look like they've seen everything twice. In a city that never stops reinventing itself and growing, the red taxi has stayed put and it's all the more remarkable for it.

Hong Kong taxis have been around since the 1940s, but the colour-coded system that exists today red for the urban core, green for the New Territories, blue for Lantau Island came together through the 1970s and 80s as the city grew faster than anyone had planned for.

The red ones are the originals. They cover Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the tunnel routes that stitch the two sides of the harbour together. At their peak there were around 18,000 of them on the streets. Today that number is closer to 15,000 still an enormous fleet by any measure.

The Toyota Crown Comfort became the defining shape of the red taxi, and it's still the car you'll see most. It went out of production in Japan in 2017, which means the cars on the road now are ageing but they're maintained with the kind of obsessive care that only comes from a livelihood depending on it.

Hong Kong's taxis aren't just for tourists or the wealthy they're woven into the daily rhythm of the city at every level.

At rush hour you'll share the rank with office workers, elderly locals heading to market, school kids, construction workers, and the occasional banker. Late at night the crowd shifts restaurant workers heading home, people spilling out of bars, couples who've missed the last MTR.

The fare system is metered, relatively affordable, and honest. There's no surge pricing, no app required, no mystery about what you'll pay. You flag one down, you get in, you go. It's refreshingly uncomplicated in an age where every ride seems to come with an algorithm attached.

Drive a red taxi in Hong Kong and you're not just doing a job you're carrying a licence that took years to earn and costs a serious amount to hold. Taxi licences in Hong Kong trade like assets; at their peak they were worth over a million Hong Kong dollars each.

Most drivers own or lease their licence and treat the work accordingly. The cab is kept immaculate. Regulars are remembered. Routes are known not from a GPS but from decades of muscle memory every side street, every shortcut, every underpass in a city that feels like it was designed to confuse.

What's changed is the economics. Ride-hailing apps, a quieter tourism trade in recent years, and rising fuel costs have put pressure on drivers who were already working long hours. Plenty of the older drivers will tell you it was better before and then, in the same breath, tell you they can't imagine doing anything else.

There's a pride in it. You can see it in the way a driver sets up his cab the small lucky cat on the dash, the laminated photos, the particular way the seat is angled. Each taxi is its own small world.

From a photography perspective, Hong Kong's red taxis are an absolute gift. The colour is so saturated, so deliberately bold against the chaos of the streets, that they anchor a frame almost automatically.

The real magic happens at night. Tsim Sha Tsui, Mong Kok, Causeway Bay the neon signs that cascade down the sides of buildings turn the streets into something between a film set and a fever dream. A red cab idling beneath a wall of Chinese characters in electric blue and pink is one of those shots that you almost feel guilty how easy it is. The city does all the work.

Shoot at dusk for the balance between ambient and artificial light. Shoot at midnight for something rawer. Get low and let the reflections on the wet road do the rest. The drivers are generally unbothered by cameras they've had tourists pointing lenses at them for decades.

What you're capturing, really, is a city in time. These taxis connect the Hong Kong of now to the Hong Kong of forty years ago. Every scratch on the bodywork, every dented bumper, every worn vinyl seat is part of that.

Fifteen years ago we climbed into a red taxi knowing nothing about Hong Kong. It took us across the harbour, past things we'd never seen, into a city that overwhelmed and delighted in equal measure. That taxi was our first experience of Hong Kong.

Coming back and finding them unchanged the same red, the same Toyota shape, the same drivers who've clearly been doing this forever felt like finding something that had been kept safe on purpose. It was cool to see the kids notice them as well asking "why are the taxis so old". Hong Kong is pushing forward as hard as it ever has. But the red taxis just keep running. Flag one down. Get in. Go somewhere you didn't plan to go. It's still the best way to see the city.