Hong Kong Day 3 | Fishing Culture in Stanley + Aberdeen

Interested in potentially juxtaposing my research on the rooftop slums in Hong Kong with fishing villages, I decided to devote my first day to understanding the importance of  water in Hong Kong culture. I had already been exposed to it a bit yesterday in Lamma, but I knew from previous research that Stanley and Aberdeen, located on the southern side of Hong Kong Island, also have strong connections to the “sea culture” in Hong Kong.

Stanley Market - "Tourist Trap"

Traveling with two classmates from other units, we began our explorations in Stanley. The local bus took about an hour, leaving the hustling streets of Kowloon and entering the outskirts of Hong Kong Island. The bus ride there was quite exciting as we were exposed to drastic contrasts in social class and building typologies. Along the route, we passed many large superblocks, but as we got closer to Stanley it was obvious that this side of Hong Kong was different.  The streets grew more quiet, and the cars around us smelled of upper class, mixed in with the occasional local bus traveling the winding roads through the mountains. For the first time, I saw houses located within the mountains rather than tall towering structures for residences. It was also early on this bus ride that I saw my first rooftop slum close to the western edge of Hong Kong Island. The stark contrast between these two images in my mind was a bit surreal.

Aberdeen Harborfront

Stanley itself was very disappointing, a tourist trap at best. The only thing to really see in the town was a local market, but even this felt extremely unauthentic. Having been disappointed by Stanley, we bought ourselves frozen yogurts and took the bus back towards Aberdeen Harbor. Aberdeen Harbor was a much more exciting part of town! The harbor was notorious for holding the Dragon Boat races once a year, although we didn’t see any dragon boats around. Instead, we saw a small boating village alongside the waterfront. Every house was raised on stilts and had its own fishing boat and fish restaurant. Adjacent to the row of homes was a large fish market that had just closed down and was getting cleaned up. With the sun going down, we wandered through the market, surrounded left and right by hundreds of fish condensed into small tanks in which they were bound to suffocate and just waiting to be handed off to the trucks coming through for collection. Our day almost over, we made our way over a sky walkway after the market and into a small neighborhood where we caught the local bus back to Central.

Restaurant in Aberdeen Harbor

From Central, we took the MTR back to our hostel and gathered a group to experience Temple Market and the street culture of Dai Pai Dongs. It was an interesting market, and the food was delicious, but I was not convinced this was a real Dai Pai Dong experience as everyone around us was obviously tourists and it felt unauthentic.