Then & Now | Kam Tin in the New Territories is a domestic tourist destination – no thanks to official initiatives

With outbound travel from Hong Kong all but dead due to pandemic restrictions, recent months have seen domestic visitors throng to formerly ignored, out-of-the-way spots. One that has seen a tremendous weekend spike in local tourists – astonishingly, perhaps, to anyone who once knew the place – is Kam Tin.

Now easily accessible by MTR, the journey from Hong Kong’s urban areas was in the past a considerable trek, which involved several changes of public transport. At least half a day would be taken up with the return journey over Tai Mo Shan and a desultory look around – and for what, more than a few visitors querulously asked themselves, when they eventually got back to Kowloon.

Thirty-odd years ago, I lost track of how many sweaty, bewildered, out-of-towners I encountered as they got off the 51 bus into rackety, unlovely Kam Tin, looking for “the traditional walled village.” Inevitably, they plaintively showed me a Hong Kong Tourist Association pamphlet that bore staggeringly little resemblance to the cheerfully squalid New Territories town where I happily made my home.

“Down the road and opposite the Wellcome supermarket is where you’ll find it,” came the unvarying reply, “and remember to hold your noses around the moat!” And off they trudged in search of an “authentic New Territories experience”, which was what they actually got – even if that encounter was significantly different from the misleading images that had inspired their journey in the first place.

Outside Kat Hing Wai, a coven of gold-fanged hags crowned with black-fringed Hakka hats clustered and fussed around any visitor, expecting to be photographed in return for payment. Their high-pitched “Dollar! Dollar! Picture! Dollar!” screech changed with the passage of the years and increased costs of living, to “Ten dollar! Ten dollar”.