Shau Kei Wan’s maritime roots

It’s early on a weekday evening in Shau Kei Wan and fragrant smoke is wafting out from a low-slung greystone temple. Inside, an elderly woman burns joss sticks to pay homage to Hong Kong’s most venerated deity: Tin Hau—the Goddess of the Sea. In Chinese mythology, Tin Hau was a 10^th century Fujianese woman credited with saving her father and brothers when they were out fishing during a typhoon. Today, there are more than 100 temples dedicated to Tin Hau across Hong Kong, most of them located in communities that gained their livelihood from the sea.

Hong Kong has always lived by the tempers of the sea. For centuries, it was populated mainly by boat dwellers, only a handful of whom settled permanently on land. Shau Kei Wan was founded in the early 18^th century by fishing families that took refuge in its sheltered bay, which is located along the narrowest point in Victoria Harbour. Like much of Hong Kong, its isolation made it a haven for pirates, so in the 1860s, the British colonial government built roads and a permanent police presence. That drew an increasing number of migrants from Mainland China, many of whom began to operate small workshops and factories.

Shau Kei Wan continued to grow after the tramway arrived in 1904. By the middle of the 20^th century, the seaside settlement was a booming fishing port, shipbuilding centre and manufacturing hub. Wood shacks clambered up the hillsides that surrounded the bay, home to thousands of new arrivals trying to make a living. That was still the scene when Lam Chi-wing began working as a tram motorman more than 30 years ago. “The area was packed with wooden house villages,” he recalls. Lam found himself in Shau Kei Wan at least half a dozen times a day as he conducted his tram back and forth across Hong Kong Island. “The [tram terminus] was once located beside a typhoon shelter where there were a lot of fishing vessels sailing in and out,” he says.

That soon changed. Part of Shau Kei Wan’s harbour had already been filled in by the early 1980s, and the rest of it was reclaimed for public housing in the 1990s. But you can still smell the brine of the sea in the neighbourhood’s streets, which is why tour guide and former travel journalist Daisann McLane loves taking visitors there. “So many threads of Hong Kong’s history weave together in Shau Kei Wan,” she says.

Walking through the market, McLane points out women selling “half-dried” fish, which are salted overnight to make them last a few extra days – a technique pioneered by the wives of fishermen to preserve their husband’s surplus catch. You can also find all manner of pungent dried seafood, not to mention fresh-caught fish, still alive and thrashing in buckets of saltwater. Every so often, a fish jumps out of a container and flops onto the street, hawkers scrambling to retrieve it.