Drying seafood the old-fashioned way in Hong Kong, but for how much longer? Tai O shop’s on borrowed time
In Lantau village famous for its shrimp paste, Chui Chun-wah has expanded his father’s business to sell a range of dried seafood, but at 63 he doesn’t expect his children to take over a trade that calls for him to work every day
Chui Chun-wah goes to the back of his shop in Tai O to check up on the seafood he has drying in the sunshine. There are large salted fish he flips over, meat from sea whelk, oysters, squid, and large dark blue vats filled with fermented shrimp paste.
The 63-year-old is the second generation owner of Yick Cheong Ho, started by his father in 1938 in the village at the western tip of Hong Kong’s biggest island, Lantau. Back then the company only focused on shrimp paste, but has expanded its line of seafood products to include fish maw, abalone, sea cucumber and shrimp roe noodles.
Watch: Tradition amongst change: the beloved Tai O seafood shop and its owner Chui Chun-wah
On the walls of the shop are black and white photographs of him as a child, around eight years old, helping out after school, scraping the scales off salted fish. “When I was young, there was so much seafood; we had to use every available space to dry them out,” he recalls.