All posts tagged: Kowloon

Entrance lobby of Tang King Po School, Ma Tau Wei, Kowloon, Hong Kong, 29 December 2021.

A few days after hearing of the closure of another of Hong Kong’s remaining pro-democracy news outlets, Stand News, and its web archive, I decided I needed a good walk to shake off the gloom. Before meeting Michele Chu, an artist friend exhibiting at 1a space in Tai Kok Tsui, I wandered around nearby Ma Tau Wai. I entered the beautiful 1950s modernist campus of Tang King Po School, which has an open chapel for worshippers. I admired the inner cloistered courtyards, visited the chapel and chatted to the friendly caretaker. The ambience was utterly solid, stable – otherworldly, almost. It was a perfect retreat for an hour – and a reminder to just get on with it. Later, I mentioned to Michele that I had visited the school and she recalled that when she learnt to drive a car, the instructor told her to remember “Tang King Po” School as she was preparing to drive, a homonym in Cantonese for “seat, mirrors, gears” – a simple reminder to adjust all three before driving. A moral there: …

Unloading a container of fruit near the wholesale fruit market, Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon, Hong Kong, 26 September 2021.

Daily, from the late afternoon until the early hours of the following morning, the streets surrounding the wholesale fruit market in the old district of Yau Ma Tei are transformed. Large containers arrive from just-unloaded ships or across the mainland border. Teams of workmen quickly unload the contents onto pallets that are trundled on trolleys through the streets, with cars and minibuses weaving in between. The newly arrived fruit is temporarily held in the market’s warehouses or on roadsides before being distributed throughout Hong Kong to independent fruit vendors, restaurants, suppliers and other outlets. The historic market is a labyrinth of alleys linking small wholesale businesses, including a row of 1930s shophouses converted into a warehouse. The site’s heritage extends onto the streets, as the physicality of loading and unloading under darkness amid moving, torch-like car headlights has a timeless, gothic ambience.  However, all this could go; the Hong Kong government has just announced the future removal of the market and its conversion into a place “for tourists” – no doubt, the business plan will involve high-price and/or tacky restaurants, bars and shops. …