Wan Chai is Hong Kong's best-known district after Central, its fame partly the result of Richard Mason's The World of Suzie Wong, a book that chronicled the life and loves of a Wan Chai prostitute (a film was also made). 

The area was the first of five wan, residential quarters set aside by the British for the Chinese; Central, or Victoria as it was then known, was reserved largely for Europeans. British military barracks were later installed, and where soldiers came, prostitutes soon followed. 

Wan Chai's reputation as a red-light district prevailed for years, achieving its greatest notoriety during the Korean and Vietnam wars, when its bars, brothels and clubs were favoured points of 'rest and relaxation' for off-duty servicemen. Today the streets still have the slightly seedy look of the 1950s and 1960s, full of dark alleys and crumbling tenements, not to mention a preponderance of bars, clubs, British 'pubs' and hostess 'establishments'. Sailors on shore leave, locals and curious tourists still prowl the night-time streets, though the area's sex, salaciousness and earthy vigour are now either memories or have been sanitized for public consumption.

Wanchai's most distinctive landmark is the magnificent Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Center, probably the biggest and best of its kind in Asia.