Within Change: Industrial Storefronts of Kwun Tong

Few of Hong Kong’s neighbourhoods have transformed as frequently as Kwun Tong. The former industrial district lies directly next to the site of Hong Kong’s former airport, the spectacular Kai Tak International Airport. Following the creation of the Special Economic Zone in Shenzhen where foreign-based firms with manufacturing interests in Kwun Tong picked up and moved to the much more affordable Shenzhen, Kwun Tong began a slow demise.

Enter the Urban Renewal Authority and their Town Centre Project. With the recent adoption of a new Outline Zoning Plan (OZP) for the southern section of Kwun Tong, all signs point towards the development of what can only be described as a secondary business district that serves not necessarily as a challenge to the financial primacy of Hong Kong but rather as an alternative. Kwun Tong is aided by rapid changes to height regulations in the neighbourhood due to the closure of Kai Tak, making the neighbourhood attractive to developers interested in building new structures.

But what of the old neighbourhood?

121102.001 by Adam Nowek

Walk around contemporary Kwun Tong and you’re bound to find dozens of open industrial storefronts. In contrast to the rhetoric of an establishing business district, Kwun Tong’s built frontages are greasy and grimy, full of labouring individuals. The businesses are primarily automobile detailing shops, though a list of businesses in this neighbourhood would resemble a complete list of craft guilds participating in a medieval European mystery play.

For this series of photographs, I isolated one section of Wai Yip Street in Kwun Tong between Lai Yip Street and Hoi Yuen Road to capture longer exposures of many of these open storefronts during working hours. Many shop owners did not mind the intrusion from the sidewalk: they were merely curious why a gwai lo was taking pictures of the workshops on a busy street. Perhaps less inviting than the fruit market workers at Yau Ma Tei, the men and women of Wai Yip Street appear united in the face of a forced transformation of the land use in the Kwun Tong area.

121102.002 by Adam Nowek

The area maintains a working class ethos within the context of potentially shady dealings. One automobile detailing shop owner was famously confrontational while I was taking my photographs from the public sidewalk, asserting the privacy of the vehicle owners he was serving while simultaneously implying that his clientele were less than savoury. Other shop owners were merely confused as to what is so fundamentally beautiful about the industrial aesthetic that Kwun Tong offers.

121102.003 by Adam Nowek

Kwun Tong’s future sits at an uneasy crossroads. While new commercial buildings and rooftop farms are springing up at every corner, Kwun Tong’s heritage is steeped in working with one’s hands in order to make a living. Time will tell how Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Authority respects this heritage while trying to create a new business district for the city.

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