Sheung Wan
Sheung Wan is a neighbourhood in flux, a district where traditional dried seafood and paper offering stores sit next to gleaming new residential buildings, boutique stores and international restaurants overflowing from Central.
The streets between Des Voeux Road West and Queen's Road West once ended on the shoreline and were home to some of the first hongs (business houses) set up by Chinese traders. That influence is still felt in the wholesale-food businesses found here today. The traditional side of the district is best seen on Wing Lok Street, where shops selling Chinese delicacies such as bird's nest and ginseng can be found outside the MTR station.
Tin On Sing Medicine Trading (46 Wing Lok Street, tel: 2545 2657) has plenty of dried seafood on offer, with a large bag of squid selling for HK$980. For HK$1,000, you can pick up a pair of deer antlers, which a saleswoman says can be made into a delicious winter soup. A little farther on is Kien Shing Hong (58 Wing Lok Street, tel: 2544 3676). On display are all sorts of dried products, including sea horses and abalone. Sadly, shark fins are here, too, at the back with other high-priced items.
Hong Kong's iconic trams are still rattling along Des Voeux Road to the Western Market terminus. French-owned Veolia Transport has taken over the tram system and is slowly modernising the cars, but that familiar screech from the brakes still carries an echo from a century ago.
The route from Kennedy Town to Causeway Bay, finished in 1904, was the city's first tram line. The double-deckers plying the route date back to 1912 and Hong Kong is one of only three cities in the world to have them. Train buffs can buy models of the trams at 80M Bus Model Shop (Western Market, 323 Des Voeux Road Central, tel: 2851 3643).
Upstairs is The Grand Stage (tel: 2815 2311), a dim sum restaurant and wedding reception venue that occasionally hosts ballroom-dancing classes.
Bonham Strand marked the waterfront when the British arrived on an island that was home to only 7,500 fishing folk. Successive reclamations have seen the shoreline march relentlessly northwards. For the sake of our famous harbour, let's hope the powers that be leave it where it is.
The Des Voeux Road area was settled by Chiu Chow people, who commonly ate a diet of salt fish with rice, leading to the first dried-seafood stores.
Around Wing Lok Street
1 The British have come
Possession Street is where British troops first claimed Hong Kong for Queen Victoria. A crew of mar- ines and officers, led by Commodore Gordon Bremer, the commander of the Far East Fleet, landed on January 26, 1841. They toasted the queen and raised the flag while ships fired a salute in the harbour. The exact spot was named Possession Point until the coast was reclaimed. There's a plaque commemorating the event at Hollywood Road Park.
2 Go West
Western Market was completed in 1906 and used to be known as Sheung Wan Market. The four-storey Edwardian building is the oldest surviving purpose- built market in Hong Kong. Originally a wet market, it was renamed in 1991 when the Land Development Corporation turned it into a curiously empty shopping centre, full of cloth and lace merchants relocated from Wing On Street, where Grand Millennium Plaza now stands.
3 Sweet bite
Western Market is a good destination for dessert. On the ground floor, a branch of Das Gute Backerei Cafe (tel: 2851 8891) stocks well-made Western pastries. Next door, Honeymoon Dessert (tel: 2851 2606) sells popular Chinese desserts.
Average house price HK$4.5 million for 600 sq ft flat on Wing Lok Street
Average rent HK$12,000 for a 570 sq ft unit in Wing Fai Building
Nearest MTR Sheung Wan station, exits along Wing Lok Street and Des Voeux Road
Nearest ATM Hang Seng and Jetco in Sheung Wan MTR station, ICBC near Western Market
Nearest restaurants dai pai dong and a cooked-food centre in Municipal Services Building
