Hong Kong

Hong Kong: Islands, Harbour and Neighbourhood Stories

Explore Hong Kong through its changing shores, working districts, village traditions, craft, food, literature and film.

Hong Kong is a maritime city of eighteen districts, where harbour, islands, dense neighbourhoods, villages and wetlands form distinct landscapes. Its harbour edges have been repeatedly remade; reservoirs carry water across island slopes; dense Kowloon streets sit alongside villages, wetlands and outlying islands. These different landscapes shape how people work, gather and remember.

This editorial home brings together stories from Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, the New Territories and the islands. Follow a theme into the full 141-article collection, with each story rooted in a specific place, object or practice.

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Harbour edges and island water

Hong Kong’s shoreline is a record of movement: reclamation pushed Central north, while Aberdeen remains a working harbour of boats, markets and shipyards. Tai Tam’s reservoirs show another relationship with water, carrying an expanding city’s supply across the island hills. Along the shore, reclaimed land, working boats and reservoirs reveal how the city has made room, earned a living and secured water.

The Praya Reclamations in Central

Two reclamation periods, from 1843–1865 and 1890–1904, pushed Central’s waterfront northward and left plaques as markers of the changing edge.

Tai Tam Reservoir and green mountains, seen from a bus.

Tai Tam Waterworks and the Eastward City

Tai Tam’s reservoirs and associated works were built in stages between 1883 and 1917 as Hong Kong expanded its water supply.

Houseboats lie alongside one another in Aberdeen Harbour.

Aberdeen Harbour and the Fishing Community

Aberdeen Harbour remains a working maritime landscape where fishing boats, shipyards, markets and tour routes share the typhoon shelter.

Kowloon: industry beside neighbourhood life

Kowloon’s urban story includes both planned growth and changing work. Kai Tak began with a reclaimed-land proposal before becoming an airfield woven into the city; Kwun Tong’s former cargo and industrial landscapes have shifted toward public waterfront and new uses. Their changing uses trace how land and work were reorganised as Kowloon grew.

Aircraft on the runway at Kai Tak Airport, Hong Kong, 24 June 1971.

Kai Tak: From a Housing Proposal to an Airfield

Kai Tak’s name began with two developers’ reclaimed-land scheme before becoming inseparable from Hong Kong aviation.

Kwun Tong’s Industrial Shift

A former cargo-working area now forms a waterfront park whose sculptures keep traces of Kwun Tong’s loading and recycling trades.

Village ties and wetland seasons

In the New Territories, community life and ecology share a landscape. Sek pun places a communal meal within clan and ritual occasions, while Deep Bay’s tidal flats support migrating waders as a feeding and resting habitat. The shared meal follows a village calendar; the tidal flats follow the movement of birds. Both give the New Territories rhythms beyond the city centre.

One Basin at the Centre of the Table

In New Territories village traditions, sek pun brings shared food into occasions of kinship, ritual and collective recognition.

Mai Po mangroves and wetland vegetation with Shenzhen’s skyline in the distance.

Winter Waterbirds across Deep Bay's Wetlands

From the East Asian–Australasian Flyway to the Mai Po Inner Deep Bay Ramsar Site, Deep Bay links distinct feeding and resting habitats for waterbirds.

Hands, kitchens and material memory

Craft is visible in a carved mahjong tile, heard in the long making of a guqin and tasted in Aberdeen’s boat noodles. These stories follow the knowledge held in tools, materials and preparation: Choi Chang Sau’s instrument-making lineage, Biu Kee’s hand-carved marks and a food boat serving dried-flounder broth. Together they move from workshop benches to a working food boat, showing knowledge carried through making and cooking.

A Year Inside a Guqin

Wood, lacquer, calligraphy and listening meet in the Hong Kong lineage of guqin maker Choi Chang Sau.

An ordinary mahjong set displayed in a Kowloon shop; it is not attributed to Biu Kee or a named carver.

The Small Marks on a Mahjong Tile

At Biu Kee in Jordan, carving and colour turn blank tiles into familiar symbols and personal designs.

Boat Noodles and Aberdeen’s Fishing Memory

Lau Kee Boat Noodles, established in 1981, serves dried-flounder broth from a food boat in Aberdeen, where a broader fishing heritage is interpreted today.

Literature and screen, read against place

Literature and film place imagined lives in real settings. In Love in a Fallen City, Eileen Chang’s characters are fictional; the real Repulse Bay Hotel provided a setting for them and opened in 1920. Later buildings on the site belong to a separate chronology. The old Yau Ma Tei Police Station, built in 1922, appears in several films while remaining a real pre-war public building.

A residential tower in Repulse Bay, Hong Kong, seen from below.

Two Landscapes at Repulse Bay

Eileen Chang’s fictional scenes and Repulse Bay’s changing buildings open two connected ways of looking at the coast.

One Police Station, Many Screen Lives

The Old Yau Ma Tei Police Station’s portico and pre-war facade have given the building a second life in cinema.

Districts

Explore eighteen districts, from harbour neighbourhoods to villages and outlying islands.

Central and Western

Central and Western — Within one Central compound, barracks, a police headquarters, courts and a prison placed several instruments of colonial rule side by side.