Lei Yue Mun

The organic forms of the stilted waterfront were just visible through the haze, they skirted the fringe of Devil’s Peak, and lay in contrast to the harsh concrete lines of Yau Tong’s industrial monoliths.

We were at Sai Wan Ho ferry pier on Hong Kong island, adjacent to the imposing marine police complex.

It was perfect timing, one of the half-hourly boats moored into place to pick up a handful of cross-harbour shoppers and day-trippers. The ferry was a small wooden, canopy-covered workhorse from the 1950s or 60s.

We boarded on a whim, irresistibly drawn by the other-worldly visage of the ramshackle sea-shore village.

The ferry destination was Sam Ka Tsuen – Three family village, in Lei Yue Mun – Carp’s gate. Lei Yue Mun is the narrowest point of Victoria harbour on its east side, a strategic point in the defense of Hong Kong, from pirates and bigger marauders.

A perfectly made-up Hong Kong aunty with tattooed eyebrows told us as we alighted the ferry that the restaurants on the other side of the typhoon shelter had seen better days. “Before you could see all the expensive cars here,” she told us. “Many rich people came here to eat.”

“Now, they come from mainland China,” she said with unapologetic disdain, before dismissing us and marching off.

The gloomy ferry pier was adjacent to the Hong Kong-China concrete plant, outside of which brightly coloured mixer trucks eagerly lined the street. Behind that an imposing former electronics factory cast its shadow across the bay, in turn overshadowed by a new housing complex, equipped with a gym suspended several floors in the sky. A lone runner pounded out his regime inside, looking down at the mishmash of stilted houses and restaurant verandas across the bay. Hong Kong has always been an incongruous clash.

But after we walked past another imposing stack of concrete – the urban council building – we hit the main street leading into the warren of alleys that link the seafood shops and restaurants.

We were immediately transported into a more rustic Hong Kong.


Massive spider crabs and grandfatherly lobsters crammed the display tanks lining the street. Vendors threw scallops and muscles into buckets, as sneaky shellfish squirted water at passers-by. Giant conches and abalones were stashed next to tanks of tiger prawns and fat-lipped groupers. Salt fish hung from metal poles, oyster flesh packed out plastic tubes, and cuttlefish optimistically glowed a luminescent underbelly.

I watched a nonchalant fish vendor as he methodically dismantled a massive tropical grouper. It took about five or six hefty chops just to behead the glistening green beast. Later the bloodied fillet lay displayed on ice, the size of about three Guinness book of records bound together.


Behind the shops the houses were stuck together out of ill-fitting material, crammed close on the narrow strip of land between sea and mountain.

One guy burned offerings of red paper in a bucket on the ground. It always amazes me the way Hong Kongers go about their spiritual duties with the same stoical face they would have, say, while parking a car in a crowded Sheung Wan street.

Many of the male shopkeepers were concentrating on their horseracing charts. With pencils poised, and live commentary plugged directly into their ears, they hovered over landlines to ring through their bets.

A green post box from the colonial era stood sentry. Still in service since “George Rex,” making it a genuine antique of at least 52 years.

Would the colonial administration put up a post-box for a squatter village I wonder? I think it may have more to do with troops on Devil’s Peak that guarded the harbour. In Chinese the name for the peak is Pao Tai Shan, which would be better translated as battery hill.

Another link with Britain was loud and clear on a large sign floating above the village houses, for a restaurant called the Hyde Park.

Nearby the small village school was dedicated to Mr A.W. Boon Haw, a quick Google search brought up an “entrepreneur and philanthropist” by the same name, credited with the invention of Tiger Balm. It could be a match.

Money Chu told us in good English that she came from Kowloon to Lei Yue Mun 29 years ago to be with her husband, to work by hi side in the family-run seafood shop. “Ten years ago the Japanese were the big spenders,” she told us, “then the Koreans.” Now of course, it’s the mainland Chinese. She was expecting good business over Chinese New Year.


Beautiful coral reef fishes swam in her main aquarium. “This one is from Philippines, and these, from Indonesia,” she explained. They were the kind of fish that are stunned with cyanide in the coral seas of Southeast Asia for live capture.

“This one is 3,000 HKD,” Money said proudly, pointing at a fat beauty around 40 cm long.

The massive red lobsters were shipped over from New Zealand, a smaller bluish one with stout claws hailed from the US. There were clams from Canada, crabs from Japan and scallops from China.

“Do you have anything from Hong Kong?” I asked, knowing the answer would probably be no, but still surprised when she couldn’t point to anything from local waters.

She said she would get us a discount at one of the restaurants the next time we came.

We walked over to the Tin Hau temple and met the skinny dogs that lurked in the shadows there. They sat close to massive calligraphy-carved boulders some god had deposited.

A pair of nineteenth century canons by the temple guarded the tip of land that pointed across the channel to the other Lei Yue Mun, on Hong Kong side, where the museum of coastal defense is housed inside an old British fort.

Three fishermen stood around with hands in pockets, their rods apparently on auto pilot, as one of the massive Star Cruise gambling ships silently rolled through the Carp’s gate.

Inside the Tin Hau temple two old ladies and a silver-haired man were busy putting up New Year decorations. Incense poured out in thick clouds from the red and gold inner chambers.

A fortune teller’s house behind the temple advertised a long list of unfathomable services, priced from 50 to 650HKD. They seemed to be variations of readings, invocations for luck, and perhaps curses against enemies.

When we sat down for a snack at the end restaurant we finally understood how the system worked. You can choose your seafood at any of the shops in the village. The restaurants will then cook your purchases for a frying fee, 90 – 120HKD at the one we were in. It seemed like a fair price and a good way of making the whole experience more interactive.

The restaurant had massive windows looking out across the “Carp’s gate”. Prime spot, perfect for a plate of squid and a bottle of beer.

I have read descriptions of Lei Yue Mun as an old Chinese village, but I’m not sure if the place has been there for much longer than the green British post box hidden in its alleys. It seems more likely that the British garrison was there first, and the village on its outskirts followed.

China Light and Power group – the territory’s main electricity supplier – describes the early days of the village in a pamphlet posted online:

“At the beginning there were only two boats beside the ‘soldiers’ pier.’ Visitors paid somewhat over $10 for a seafood meal…The seafood boat of Mr Sit Chi Lit… also anchored beside the ‘soldier’s pier’ and was popular among customers.”

It goes on to say that the seafood business has been prospering since the 1970s.

But long before that, Devil’s Peak was reputed to be a pirate stronghold. A big boss by the name of Cheng Yat occupied the strategic lookout from 1723, according to Patricia Lim, author of Discovering Hong Kong’s cultural heritage. Cheng family descendents went on to terrorise Hong Kong waters through the 1800s, including Cheng Kin who died in action as far away as Vietnam.

Cheng Kin’s widow then took over the family business and apparently turned it into a regional force to be reckoned with. She regulated pirate wages and issued sea passports, and by the time of her (unexplained) downfall in 1809 was in command of up to 70,000 pirates in 1,200 junks that sailed in six fleets, each under its own flag, along the South China coast, according to Lim.

The Brits claimed they had officially brought piracy under control in 1850, but that could have been an expediency brought on by the fact that the Admiralty couldn’t afford to carry on paying the bounty after the Empire’s own soldiers reaped in claims of 76,690 pounds in just two years for catching pirates.

It is a pity that there is little mention of piracy in a new development plan under discussion among tourism chiefs in the Hong Kong government. In a paper posted in September by the committee charged with “ waterfront enhancement,” the “rich heritage of the former fishing village” is mentioned but the main proposals seem to be little more than construction projects.

There are proposals to build a new boat landing key, a breakwater, and a waterfront promenade. Additionally, “ocean-themed” lookout points are being mooted, along with the “beautification” of paving, “greening works” and the building of rain shelters.

And finally, in a brilliant touch of bureaucratic inanity, the committee are proposing the construction of a carp-shaped viewing platform “to serve as a landmark of LYM. ”

I wonder what “green” material that would be made from? The neighbours at Hong Kong-China concrete company have probably got a suggestion.