Known as the centre for traditional Hong Kong-style cuisine, Sham Shui Po is an old district full of street hawkers and dai pai dong. Hongkongers return to the area repeatedly to enjoy an array of traditional Chinese dishes that have changed little in the past century.
A former stall, Shea Wong Sin is one of three snake shops in the Sham Shui Po area. The king cobra displayed in a cage at the front of the shop attracts the attention of passers-by, and for HK$16,800 the snake can be yours.
Manager Tse Ming, the brother in-law of founder Tam Sin, has been selling his snake soup there for more than 20 years.
'Snake soup is a winter speciality because it is nourishing and warms your stomach,' says Tse.
'Our soup base is made with traditional Chinese medicines and boiled for four hours before being mixed with ingredients such as snake meat, mushrooms, dried orange peel, ginger, chicken and black fungus. It's served with sliced lemon leaves and crunchy flour crackers for only HK$30.'
Shea Wong Sin has been serving its fare from a number of locations in Sham Shui Po for the past 40 years. Its signature snake soup is created from five different species - the Indo-Chinese rat snake, Chinese cobra, copperhead racer, banded krait and the agkistrodon pit viper.
'The more poisonous the snake, the greater the medicinal value,' says Tse, who advocates snake as a healthy food because it's low in cholesterol.