Kwun Tong

For trends, food, shopping, relaxation

When renowned Swiss architect Jacques Herzog was in Hong Kong on one of his regular visits, he noted that some of the buildings he found most inspiring were the city’s giant industrial blocks: huge concrete edifices studded with mismatched windows, old signs and air conditioning units. “They’re ugly,” he said. “But full of individual life.”

For decades, Kwun Tong was one of Hong Kong’s biggest industrial hubs. Then the factories relocated to mainland China, leaving an abundance of relatively affordable space in a city where space is a luxury. Designers, musicians and small businesses began to move in, giving new life to the foreboding industrial structures.

Today, the transformation is obvious. Just head to the Kwun Tong Promenade, a former recycling depot that is now one of the city’s most attractive harbourside parks. Bands often play shows underneath the nearby highway flyover, with an old flour mill as a backdrop, while an illuminated steel sculpture pays homage to the giant bales of paper that once occupied the waterfront.

Wander a few minutes away and you’ll come across sleek new office towers and shopping malls. The government hopes to transform Kwun Tong into a new central business district called CBD2 and this plan is already bearing fruit. In Kowloon Bay, on the district’s western edge, the 19-storey shopping mecca MegaBox towers over a rapidly changing skyline of new office towers.

Just across the street, you’ll find ZCB, an experimental project and parkland designed to showcase the potential of carbon-neutral architecture. The park pavilion often hosts exhibitions, but even if there’s nothing going on, it’s a pleasant place to chill out.

Wine-loving tycoon Pan Sutong is one of the people involved in transforming the area. He recently completed a new office tower on Kai Cheung Road housing four upscale restaurants. The flagship eatery is Le Pan, whose vast wine cellar is matched by the experimental French food of Singaporean chef Edward Voon.

“Basically, I’m self-taught and I was attracted to French cuisine by the discipline and precision that are required to do it well,” Voon says. “It’s a cuisine with a strong personality, which I love. I’ve always been artistic and I find contemporary French food very beautiful. Creating and presenting it is like theatre to me.”

For all the slick newcomers to Kwun Tong, however, the area’s spirit still dwells in its old industrial buildings. You’ll find treasures in places like the Camel Paint Building, a huge multi-block outlet shopping complex where people flock to find the latest cosmetics and fashion — along with wine, craft beer, camping gear and pretty much anything else you can think of.

Not far away, you’ll find places like Marble, Print & Clay, a printmaking studio run by artists David Jasper Wong, Bambi Lam and Terence Leung. It hosts regular workshops and events. Lam says they were surprised to find many old-fashioned, one-man print shops still in operation when they moved to Kwun Tong. “They all give us their opinion,” he says, laughing.

Start from Zero is another neighbourhood studio. Founded by local graffiti artists Dom and Katol, the brand has now branched out to include woodworking and interior design, and they throw open their doors to the public on many weekends.

Kwun Tong’s spacious industrial units have long given people the opportunity to explore their interests in a way that wouldn’t be possible in a high-priced commercial space. Former cinematographer Fung Wing-kuen takes advantage of this to store his vast collection of vintage and antique objects. You’ll find everything from mid-century lamps to old apothecary cabinets to classic bicycles in his space, which is called Simple Living. Fung says he started by collecting cameras. “Later on, I couldn’t stop.”

End your day of industrial exploration with a visit to Moonzen Brewery, located on the second floor of a Shing Yip Street factory complex. “We want our beers to tell stories,” says founder Laszlo Raphael. Some are inspired by Chinese mythology, like the Jade Emperor IPA, while others tap into Chinese ingredients: the Yama Porter is made with Sichuan peppercorns, while the Flaming Mountains is made with muscat grapes harvested in far-west Xinjiang province.

The brewery has a stylish taproom stocked with antique furniture, beer ageing in ceramic yellow wine pots and images of Chinese gods screen-printed by Marble, Print & Clay. You would never know it was there from the grimy industrial corridor outside, but every Friday, Moonzen invites the public to tours and tastings: a lot of life behind an unassuming facade.

For history, culture, food, hiking

Every Mid-Autumn Festival, families gather on the beach at Lei Yue Mun to eat mooncakes and burn candles. It’s a special spot: one of the last bits of natural shoreline on Victoria Harbour, bordered by a picturesque rock and stilt houses that frame a glorious view of Hong Kong’s skyline.

Those families aren’t the only ones who have taken advantage of the location. The villages of Lei Yue Mun are some of Hong Kong’s oldest settlements for a reason. They sit at the narrowest point in the harbour, and for centuries have been a haven for seafarers and their families. At first, there were pirates; they were eventually replaced by fishermen and miners who worked in the nearby quarries. Today, Lei Yue Mun is a favourite stop for seafood lovers, but it offers even more than fresh fish and razor clams.

Although it feels a world apart from the hustle of urban Hong Kong, Lei Yue Mun is just a short walk from MTR Yau Tong Station. You’ll know you have arrived when you spot the fishing boats moored in the Sam Ka Tsuen typhoon shelter. From there, a pedestrian promenade takes you into a covered arcade lined by tanks of live sea creatures.

If you’re in the mood for seafood, the procedure is simple. Find a restaurant and inspect their tank. Do you feel like lobster? Crab? Geoduck? Clams? They’re all there, kept alive in seawater. You just need to point at whatever is making your stomach grumble and the restaurant staff will fetch your dinner, take it to the kitchen and prepare it in classic Cantonese fashion.

There are dozens of seafood restaurants in Lei Yue Mun and competition is fierce, but a few stand out above the rest. Gateway Cuisine is known for having the best view, thanks to its unobstructed waterfront location. Happy Seafood is praised for its baked lobster with cheese and steamed scallops with garlic and glass noodles. Lung Tang Restaurant makes an excellent Chiu Chow-style cold flower crab.

After dinner, don’t forget “Shui Heung Yuen for some sweets,” advises Alexandre Fontaine, who makes sure to stop by the bakery whenever he is in Lei Yue Mun. Founded by confectioner Lee Kui in 1957, the shop is known for Chinese-style pastries like wife cakes, coconut cakes and almond cakes.

As you approach the beach, seafood restaurants give way to small houses, but there’s reason to press on. The Lei Yue Mun Wishing Tree is a wishbone-shaped banyan invested with good fortune. Passersby tie ribbons to the tree in the hopes of improving their luck.

Keep going and you will soon arrive at the Tin Hau Temple, built more than 200 years ago in honour of the goddess of the sea. Although there are more than 100 temples dedicated to Tin Hau in Hong Kong, this one is particularly atmospheric, tucked behind giant boulders inscribed with messages of good fortune. There’s even a historic cannon — a reminder of the days when piracy was rampant in Hong Kong.

When the British arrived in Hong Kong in 1841, piracy was just one of their concerns. They were also worried about invasion by competing empires — especially Russia — so in the late 19th century, they built a network of batteries and redoubts around the harbour. Just 20 minutes uphill from the Tin Hau Temple is Devil’s Peak, home to the ruins of the century-old Gough Battery.

You’ll find the remnants of bunkers, sentry posts, explosives magazines and gun emplacements. “It’s interesting to wander through a war relic in a city that has a relatively peaceful history,” says hiking enthusiast Daryl Chan. The battery saw intense fighting during the Japanese invasion in 1941, but for most of its history, it has sat idle, except for the weekend visitors who come to admire the ruins.

It’s an easy excursion. “The hike is not too strenuous but it provides a great view of the harbour,” says Chan. You can see the narrows of Lei Yue Mun just below — and it’s easy to understand why generations of pirates, fishermen, military planners and now weekend visitors have found this watery passage so alluring.