Craft of building the temporary structures needs new learners
Wearing rubber gloves to protect their hands, their bodies glistening with sweat under a blazing sun, bamboo workers nimbly go about building another Chiu Chow opera house in Wong Tai Sin.
The team works methodically, fixing bamboo poles together with plastic ties. As if alive, the framework for the opera house grows steadily.
Passers-by glance at the work in progress and old men sitting in the shade of a nearby garden scrutinise each move, unaware perhaps they are watching a dying skill.
But the owner of one of a small handful of companies specialising in the building of bamboo opera houses is fully aware of the danger.
Cheung Shuet-ying, 57, boss of Wai Yip bamboo, said the industry was doomed unless it attracted young workers.