The big five sights  Kowloon: Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok
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Kowloon: Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok Yau Ma Tei, north of Jordan Road, was one of the fi rst areas to be built upon after the British acquired Kowloon in 1860. The bucolic name (loosely meaning “sesame fi elds”) has long been redundant – the area being home to a grid of main roads and container port projects – though a vibrant night market, plus Hong Kong’s largest jade market and a temple of some repute provide good reasons to come up this way. North of Yau Ma Tei, Mong Kok is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, its main roads and backstreets packed with decrepit tenement blocks where a good proportion of the Hong Kong people spend their lives in cramped, and occasionally grim, conditions. Despite all this – and a reputation as the heartland of Hong Kong’s Triad gangs – Mong Kok is not a threatening place, and boasts several more excellent street markets. You can also buy electronic goods and accessories at lower prices than in Tsim Sha Tsui, and with less chance of being ripped off – though note that the district is at the heart of Hong Kong’s massive pirated computer software industry.
Mong Kok’s northern limit is Boundary Street, which until 1898 and the acquisition of the New Territories marked the border with China.
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The streets north off Jordan Road are interesting places to browse amongst some lowkey businesses which serve the locals’ daily needs. Shanghai Street contains an eclectic and attractive mix of shops and stalls selling items as diverse as brightred Chinese wedding gowns, embroidered pillow cases, lacquered shrines, statuettes, chopping blocks, incense and kitchenware. To the west, Reclamation Street sports an intense produce market offering concrete proof that the Cantonese demand absolutely fresh food, with fish, frogs and turtles alive in tanks and buckets for shoppers to inspect.
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Temple Street Night Market (daily 5-11pm) is the most famous market in Kowloon, crammed with stalls selling tourist-oriented gear, including clothes (for men particularly), Bruce Lee dolls and electrical knick-knacks, household goods, watches, cheap CDs and jewellery, while fortune-tellers and herbalists set up stalls in the surrounding streets. If you’re lucky, there’ll also be impromptu performances of Cantonese opera. About halfway up the street you’ll see an undercover area of alfresco seafood restaurants with wobbly tables and stools: a couple of plates of sea snails, prawns, mussels or clams, with a beer or two, won’t be expensive (fish often is though fix all prices in advance), and it’s a great place to stop for a while and take in the atmosphere. Some of the stalls even have formal English menus, if you want to know exactly what you’re getting.
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Kansu St, Yau Ma Tei. Daily 9am-6pm. Yau Ma Tei’s Jade Market features several hundred stalls selling an enormous selection of jade jewellery, statues and antique reproductions. In part, jade owes its value to the fact that it’s a hard stone and very difficult to carve; it’s also said by the Chinese to promote longevity and prevent decay (royalty used to be buried in jade suits made of thousands of tiny tiles held together with gold wire). There are basically two kinds of jade: nephrite (which can be varying shades of green), and the rarer jadeite, much of which comes from Burma and which can be all sorts of colours. A rough guide to quality is that the jade should be cold to the touch and with a pure colour that remains constant all the way through; coloured tinges or blemishes can reduce the value. However, unless you know your stuff, the scope for being misled is considerable, so it’s more enjoyable to just poke around the stalls to see what turns up for a few dollars note that all the serious buying is over before lunch.
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Temple St, Yau Ma Tei. Daily 8am-6pm. That Yau Ma Tei was once a working harbour is clear from the presence of the Tin Hau Temple, dedicated to the ubiquitous southern Chinese sea goddess. The small area fronting the complex is usually teeming with men sitting around or gambling at backgammon and mahjong, and people may ask for alms as you go in. The main hall, in typical heavy stone, is around a century old; of the three other halls here, the one to the left is dedicated to Shea Tan, protector of the local community, and the ones to the right to Shing Wong, the city god, and Fook Tak, an earth god.
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Two more interesting markets can be found in Mong Kok’s Tung Choi Street. Between Dundas and Shantung streets, the crowded stalls of the Ladies’ Market’s (active from about 10am-5pm) sell mostly inexpensive clothing. North of Bute Street, the Goldfish Market (same hours) is one long, crowded run of shops festooned with all kinds of ornamental and tropical fish in tanks and fairground-like plastic bags, as well as the necessary accessories for displaying them in the home. Goldfish especially are a popular symbol of good fortune and wealth in China (the words gold fish sound the same as gold surplus in Chinese) and are believed to invoke a trouble-free life; you’ll often see drawings of fish or fishshaped lanterns in temples or on display during Chinese festivals.
Consequently, great care is taken with their breeding, and some can cost thousands of dollars.
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A block northeast of the top end of Tung Choi Street is Flower Market Road. There are dozens of inexpensive flower and plant shops here (daily 10am-6pm), and at the weekend many more vendors bring in trucks full of orchids, orange trees and other exotica, crowding the narrow pavements with stalls. It’s particularly good around Chinese New Year, when people come to buy narcissi, orange trees and plum blossom to decorate their apartments.
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Yuen Po St, off Prince Edward Rd, Mong Kok. Daily 7am-8pm. Mong Kok’s Bird Market is housed in a purpose-built Chinese style garden. There are two or three dozen stalls crammed with caged songbirds, parakeets, mynah birds, live crickets tied up in little plastic bags (they’re fed to the birds with chopsticks), birdseed barrels and newly made bamboo cages - minus bird these start at $60 or so, though the more elaborate ones run into the hundreds. Little porcelain bird bowls and other paraphernalia cost from around $10. It’s interesting just to watch the local men who bring their own caged birds here for an airing and to listen to them sing; taking your songbird out for a walk is a popular pastime among older Chinese men, one you’ll see often in the more traditional areas of Hong Kong.
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Chuen Cheung Kui
91-95 Fa Yuen St, Mong Kok T2395 9370. Daily 11am-midnight. Hakka cooking from China’s Guangdong province - try the salt-baked chicken or tofu cubes stuffed with mince. Moderate prices make this a popular place with locals, and there’s also an English menu.
Joyful Vegetarian
530 Nathan Rd, Yau Ma Tei T2780 2230. Daily 10am-11pm. Inexpensive Chinese vegetarian meals, all beautifully presented - try the sweet and sour “fish” with pine nuts. Like most vegetarian establishments, it serves takeaway meals out front.
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