When Kai Tak was the site of one of the world’s most fabulous airports – rather than host to a white-elephant cruise terminal – it was easy to slip out of the back door and across the road into Little Bangkok in Kowloon City, a distinctly Thai corner of Hong Kong with restaurants that serve some of the city’s best tom kha gai (coconut chicken soup) and Thai red curry – and at very reasonable prices. Now Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Authority has got its eye on Sa Po Road and surrounding streets where these restaurants operate, and plans to shift the 800 or so Thai residents and their businesses to make way for something newer, altogether more orderly and far less characterful. Little Bangkok is not the only neighbourhood of its kind where people from the same country or part of the world have congregated and opened businesses that serve their community’s needs – and draw curious diners from elsewhere in Hong Kong. We celebrate some of them here – who knows when the march of progress will reach them too? Africans Yuen Long may not top the Tourism Board’s list of must-sees, but it’s home for a sizeable proportion of Hong Kong’s African population, who are drawn by the New Territories town’s reasonable rents and generally laid-back ambience. Tour the world without leaving Hong Kong in the footsteps of the famous “There’s about a couple of thousand Africans living here permanently, a lot of them from Nigeria,” says Innocent Mutanga, a Zimbabwean who founded the Africa Centre, a creative hub and focal point for Africans in Hong Kong. “Yuen Long’s popular as it’s near China – although that’s less of a consideration when the border’s closed – and the industrial areas of the New Territories, and it’s not so crowded as somewhere like Tsim Sha Tsui.” Puzzlingly, perhaps, there is no stand-out African restaurant in Yuen Long, whereas Africa Coffee & Tea is thriving merrily in the on-trend tech and arts hub of Wong Chuk Hang. Russians Russians have been making Hong Kong their (often temporary) home for much of the past century. Former imperial soldiers fleeing the communist revolution were recruited by the police, a Russian Orthodox church first established in the 1930s reopened in Sheung Wan a dozen years ago, and the recipe for borscht at Queen’s Cafe, in North Point, differs little from when it opened in 1952. “A lot of Russians live in Tseung Kwan O,” says Irina Blit, a sales and e-commerce manager from Odessa, in Ukraine. “We do tend to stick together, and I’d say more or less everyone has heard of each other via social media, but groups tend to form around age and interest.” Nowadays, of course, it’s mainly language that distinguishes Russians from the general population, unlike in the mid-1960s, when the Post reported that the billowing trousers and high-laced boots of White Russian refugees – who had been living in China – caused tourists to stop and stare. Canadians Canuck sports bar The Last Resort in SoHo is ground zero for Hong Kong’s Canadian population, which numbers around 300,000. Why so many? Back in the 1980s, Vancouver and its sister cities on the other side of the Pacific offered a welcoming bolt-hole to Hongkongers jittery about what the post-1997 future might hold. True-blue passport secured, many zipped back home. “Canadians always feel a sense of kindred spirit when meeting other Canadians in Hong Kong but I wouldn’t say they only hang out with each other,” says Liliane Ng, a private jeweller who hails from Toronto. “But a lot of bars and restaurants on Peel Street are run by Canadians, and The Last Resort has a whole wall with photos of famous Canucks, so it’s an obvious rendezvous.” French Ask French people what they like about Hong Kong and they’ll rattle off a whole string of pluses: the mix of ancient and modern, urban and rural, dynamic international city. “And let’s not forget that Hong Kong is very tax-friendly compared to France,” says mixed martial arts instructor Marc Guyon, who was born in Marseille. “That’s why a lot of French people who have commercial interests in Asia prefer to live here, and because it is easier to do business from Hong Kong.” Vague similarities to the Cote d’Azur draw the francophone community – estimated at 15,000-plus – to coastal communities such as Repulse Bay and Sai Kung, while in pre-Covid-19 days Stanley hosted a regular French market. “The French are sometimes accused of sticking together, and that may be due to language problems, but nowadays it’s good to see that many more bridges are being created with the community as a whole,” says Guyon. Nepalis As many as 40,000 Nepalis live in Hong Kong, and one of the most close-knit ethnic outposts is the community in Kam Tim in the New Territories. “As a young soldier in the British Army’s Brigade of Gurkhas I trained just down the road from here, in Shek Kong, in the camp called Malaya Lines,” says Rambahadur Gurung, who retired in 1996 after 15 years in the ranks. “And I used to run in the annual [Khud] race up and down Kai Kung Leng, which overlooks the valley. It’s 585 metres high, so I don’t think I’d try that nowadays. “There’s quite a few of us ex-servicemen here, happy to be living so close to where we spent much of our career.” Jhorley – which many acknowledge as one of the best restaurants in Hong Kong for Nepalese curry, dumplings and other dishes – is just down the road from Kam Tin in another Nepali enclave, Yuen Long. Far more Nepalis live downtown, in Jordan and Yau Ma Tei, on the Kowloon peninsula. Parsis Where would Hong Kong be without its Parsis – perhaps the city’s highest-achieving, lowest-profile ethnic group? Followers of Zoroastrianism who trace their roots to ancient Persia, Parsis launched or helped found the Star Ferry, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation that became global giant HSBC, the Hong Kong stock exchange, Ruttonjee Hospital, the University of Hong Kong and much more in the early decades of Hong Kong’s existence as a British colony. Parsis also had a big hand in founding both the Kowloon Cricket Club and the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Not bad going for a community that currently numbers little more than 250 but whose members continue to play a major role in Hong Kong business and donate to charity with habitual generosity. “As a community we are fairly well dispersed, living anywhere from Aberdeen to Sai Kung,” says Neville Shroff, president of the Hong Kong Zoroastrian Association. “However, we do come together regularly at our prayer hall in Causeway Bay, especially at the Parsee New Year – which happens to fall in the middle of August.” British-born Chinese Almost a quarter-century on from the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, “under the radar” is a good way to describe the British-born Chinese who are pretty much all over Hong Kong but manage to blend in. “I’d guess there’s several thousand of us,” says Chris Lam, a teacher whose accent is one fairly obvious clue to his Belfast birth and upbringing. “It’s difficult to say exactly how many, as there are no official figures as not all British passport holders in Hong Kong who are ethnically Chinese are necessarily BBC. “We readily mix with other cultures and nationalities, though we probably lean towards the Western. I suppose it depends on how well integrated some of us are and also on the individual’s level of Cantonese – or lack of it.” Hiking Lantau Peak? Start from Ngong Ping and save your legs In the 1960s, many New Territories residents headed for the UK to seek their fortune, Lam’s parents among them, so it was natural that their offspring should head back to where they came from. “One of the most popular Brit pubs is the King’s Belly, in Tai Po,” says Lam. “Premier League [football] on the telly, fish and chips and Boddingtons on the menu; it’s very much the whole nine yards of ale!”