A vibrant cultural hub: Sham Shui Po arts

Lately, longstanding establishments have been joined by a new wave of creative institutions and businesses. The trend started around 2008, when a factory building in Shek Kip Mei – one of the former shantytowns above Sham Shui Po – was converted into the Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre, a cluster of art studios and galleries with a theatre, tea house and coffee shop.

There have been more grassroots efforts, too. Patricia Choi’s grandfather was a Sham Shui Po tailor who eventually bought most of the units in a Lai Chi Kok Road building. When he passed away, she took over its management and began converting the empty spaces into a hostel called Wontonmeen. There’s also a space filled with vintage Hong Kong memorabilia that plays host to live jazz.

A few blocks away, street art has brought new life to building facades. Huge, colourful murals from the 2016 HK Walls festival still adorn shop shutters. On Tai Nan Street, Spanish street artist Okuda has transformed a grey 11-storey building into a riotously multicoloured geometric bear.

It’s that new energy that drew travel journalist Rita Chan and her partner, Pan Tang, to the neighbourhood. “It used to be really weird to come here if you’re a tourist,” she says. But the out-of-the-way feel of Sham Shui Po’s old wholesale district – much quieter than the market district to the north – appealed to them, so they decided to open a ground-floor studio. The result is Midway, which doubles as a shop and workspace. Chan has curated a selection of handmade products she sourced during her travels. Many items come from Japan, but there are plenty of homegrown products, too, such as miniature sculptures of Brutalist architecture in Hong Kong – a collaboration between design research group Brutalism HK and concrete studio Moldflip.