Dense cluster of illuminated high-rise residential towers at night

Field Notes · 街坊筆記

西環Western District

sai1 waan4

The last sliver of old Hong Kong Island. Seafood, bamboo scaffolding, and a tram that's been running since 1904.

港島最後的舊面貌。海味、竹棚、百年電車。

Start at Kennedy Town and walk east, and you pass sea-salt-stained tenements, dai pai dongs still open at 11pm, and the western end of the tram line where the ding ding turns around. Most of these prints came from a two-kilometre stretch of that same walk. It's the part of the island I photograph more than anywhere else, because it keeps changing just slowly enough to notice.

Best time: An hour before sunset, or after 10pm.
A walk: Exit Sai Ying Pun MTR at A1 and walk west along Queen's Road West, through the dried-seafood blocks, past the Centre Street escalator, and down to the waterfront at Kennedy Town. It's about 25 minutes if you walk straight through, though in practice you'll probably stop half a dozen times along the way.

Interior of empty Hong Kong tram upper deck at night with motion blur city lights through windows

Upper Deck I

上層風景（一）

The tram's other end

The Island Line tram turns around here, and if you catch the 6am run while the drivers are changing shift you get the whole loop of the island for HK$3, which is still the best ride in the city. Try to sit upstairs, because the second deck is level with the first-floor shop signs and you end up reading the neighbourhood one shopfront at a time.

Residential building covered in traditional bamboo scaffolding with street-level signage

Bamboo Cage

竹籠圍城

Scaffolding as skyline

Bamboo scaffolding is a working trade in this part of town, not a photo op, and the crews who build these cages climb up and down them like ladders. A structure this size goes up in a few days and comes down faster, so if you happen to see one wrapped around a building in a way you like, it's worth coming back that same afternoon. By the following month the building will usually be standing on its own again.

Dense City

密城之夜

Dense City

Walk any lane between Queen's Road West and Pok Fu Lam Road and look up. The towers stack into each other. Sai Ying Pun packs more flats per square kilometre than most countries have people, and every balcony still has a laundry pole sticking out of it.

Seafood restaurant neon sign viewed through scaffolding mesh with diners inside

Through the Mesh

網後霓虹

Seafood street

The dried-seafood shops on 海味街 (Des Voeux Road West) have been at the same addresses for generations. After 9pm the metal shutters roll down, and most of them are painted red, so the whole block takes on a pink cast under the pharmacy neon next door.

Long-exposure shot of a metal footbridge extending over misty rocks into calm sea water

Into the Mist

霧中長橋

The MTR arrived in 2015

Before the station opened, Sai Ying Pun was a bit of a secret, and the cafes stayed cheap and the walls stayed unpainted for a lot longer than they should have. Some of that's gone now, of course, but enough of it sticks around that this is still the first place I take visitors who want to see a Hong Kong that isn't trying to sell them something.