Weaving a story of Tsuen Wan’s past

The Mills is the brainchild of Vanessa Cheung, the granddaughter of Nan Fung Textiles’ founder Dr Chen Din-hwa. "I came up with the idea of The Mills project with the aim of preserving both my family roots and Hong Kong’s textile history," she explains, after realising the buildings were still owned by the company.

The first textile manufacturers arrived in Hong Kong in the 1940s from Shanghai, seeking a less turbulent place for their factories following wartime and post-war social and political upheavals in China. By the mid-1950s, business was booming. When Nan Fung Textiles factory was founded in 1954, 30 per cent of manufacturing workers were in textiles. “The textile industry was a large contributor in shaping Hong Kong’s economy and people,” Cheung elaborates. “It supported the livelihoods of over 230,000 people during the 1970s. It was also instrumental in shifting cultural norms as it was women who made up a significant proportion of the workforce in the textile industry.”

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, rising land and labour costs gradually forced textile production to move to Mainland China. Nan Fung Textiles ceased its cotton-spinning operations in 2008 and the buildings were converted into warehouses until Cheung kick-started The Mills project in 2013. Now, the textiles industry might have all but disappeared, but its legacy remains. “Over the years, many of these old factory workers have remained in Tsuen Wan,” says Cheung. “We believe that former workers’ ethic and spirit are important assets, which should be passed on.”

Many former textile workers moved on to other pursuits, such as managing textile exports rather than manufacturing them. Nan Fung Textiles transitioned into an entirely different industry, and became property developer Nan Fung Group.

Aside from appraising the building itself, visitors will be able to learn more about the history of the area from The Mills’ non-profit institution, the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (CHAT), where art and cultural exhibitions and other programming related to textiles will run.