The crucible of Hong Kong's manufacturing revolution in the 1960s, San Po Kong Industrial Estate, is dead, but new industries are being drawn to the district
The gates to the Hip Shing metal shop creaked to a close yesterday. Around it, gates leading to other workshops at the San Po Kong Industrial Estate were already boarded up and padlocked, eviction notices from the Housing Authority the official seals of their fate.
Just in front, Tang Sai-bun was taking one more look at the place that defined not just his work but his life for the past four decades. By the end of the month, he will have finished relocating Hip Shing to another Housing Authority factory estate in Kwun Tong, but the 74-year-old said it would not be the same - even though he is moving everything, down to the gate itself, so the new shop will look exactly like the old.
Mr Tang was among the 40 tenants who protested last month against the authority reclaiming the estate for redevelopment, and he said every person on the estate was a friend and a neighbour he would now have to leave behind.
The protesters, representing about 10 per cent of the estate's 900 units, wanted more compensation but the authority refused to give in. Mr Tang was offered $250,000 for his two 24-square-metre units, but he said the authority should have helped pay for moving and the cost of installing water and electricity in the new shop.
Then again, Mr Tang recalled, there wasn't much help the last time he had to move either, back in 1963. On January 15 that year, he moved from Tai Kok Tsui to the then newly built estate. The government resettled him and his store after Typhoon Wanda nearly flattened the city the year before.