Hundreds of people descended on Ham Tin Beach in Sai Kung on Saturday, the second day of the Labour Day Golden Week holiday in mainland China.

The tranquil spot is one of the many attractions in Hong Kong that have gained popularity on mainland Chinese social media platforms in recent months, prompting concerns about overtourism and environmental damage.

See also: Tourists flock to Hong Kong countryside as city records 600,000 arrivals in first 2 days of Golden Week

When HKFP visited Ham Tin Beach on Saturday afternoon, there were around 200 people, most of whom were mainland tourists. They were spotted setting up tents, while some of them were cooking and eating food.

Burnt twigs suggested some had started fires on the beach. There were also cigarette butts and other trash left behind.

Officers from the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) patrolled the area and asked visitors to pick up after themselves.

Environmental NGO Greenpeace, which has urged authorities to do more to protect against overtourism and ecological damage to Hong Kong’s countryside, has criticised the government’s measures as lacking deterrence.

Hong Kong is famous for its tiny, cramped living spaces. Many flats lack balconies, making drying laundry a major challenge.

As winter gives way to warmer months, many lower-income families hang their garments and bedding in outdoor public areas on sunny days. Some also take food items like dried tangerine peels, salted fish, and dried bok choy out to the streets to sun-dry, creating a uniquely Hong Kong scene.

The shortage of living space pushes the private sphere into the open, where the display of personal items exudes an air of quiet, unhurried life.

Words by James Lee.

Wielding a brush with bristles tapered to a needle-thin point, Joseph Tso applied black overglaze paint, filling the gaps in the outlines of an old Guangcai porcelain piece with a deftness that belies his age in the late seventies.

“These old ones, the outlines are all broken, and the colours have faded,” he said with his arm resting on a wooden box to keep the numbness in his hand at bay. “Back in the day, I would have just handed this to one of our painters.”

Tso is the third-generation owner of the 98-year-old Yuet Tung China Works in Kowloon Bay, the city’s oldest hand-painted porcelain factory.

He was six when he moved from mainland China to Hong Kong with his family in 1956. He grew up surrounded by porcelainware.

The factory was originally named Kam Wah Loong when it was established by Tso’s grandfather in 1928 in Kowloon City.

“Historically, there was a lot of conflict in China, whereas Hong Kong was much more stable. My grandfather saw an opportunity and realised that foreigners really liked our porcelain, so he set up the first factory,” Tso said.

Two decades later, after World War II, the factory was renamed Yuet Tung – its name to this day.

Industrial boom

The painstaking detail that goes into the Qing Dynasty-era craft, named guangcai or “Canton famille rose porcelain” in English, demands a three-year apprenticeship before craftspeople can work at the factory, Tso said.

Only after he graduated from secondary school in the late 1960s was he allowed to start learning porcelain techniques at the factory.

That was when Hong Kong’s industrial boom was in full swing, with several dozen workers hand-painting Yuet Tung’s porcelain and a client list containing the names of European royal families and overseas department stores.

“I would help with the external affairs, while my father would handle the manufacturing,” he said.

Tso attributes the factory’s success in part to his English-language education in the British colony, which helped him meet overseas buyers and expand the porcelain factory’s clientele worldwide.

At its peak, a vast majority of the factory’s business was export-driven. American department stores such as R.H. Macy – known today as Macy’s – led demand for the porcelain maker’s products, and would regularly ask the factory for new designs, while European royal families would commission the factory to have their coats of arms painted on porcelain dinnerware.

Local hotels such as the Peninsula and the Regent were also among Yuet Tung’s top clients.

The city’s industrial boom slowed after mainland China introduced economic reforms in 1978 and opened up to foreign trade and investment.

The resulting labour flight in the 1990s hit the factory hard after its painters, along with the dozens of other factories in Hong Kong, left for the mainland.

Yuet Tung is the only factory that stayed. “I didn’t want to go up for networking,” Tso said with a chuckle.

Now, only a low hum from an industrial kiln and the occasional clinking of porcelain plates punctuates the silence in the factory, as its ageing painters work quietly behind stacks of porcelainware.

After the city’s economy de-industrialised, Yuet Tung maintains its operations by serving luxury clients and selling custom pieces locally. In recent years, it has secured funding from the government’s Intangible Cultural Heritage scheme.

The human touch

Yuet Tung is still maintaining its local, hand-drawn heritage while introducing new techniques to help ease the painstaking work of its painters.

Traditional Guangcai artisans use black pigment and razor-thin brushes to draw outlines of motifs such as peonies, phoenixes, dragons, and carp on white porcelain. The outlined illustrations are then filled in with pale pinks and contrasting greens with touches of sharp vermillion and gold highlights.

After the painted wares are fired in an 800-degree-Celsius kiln, the special overglaze enamel paints are vitrified and bonded to the porcelain, taking on a transparent matte finish.

A closer look at some of the finished porcelains at the factory reveals black outlines that tend to vary in weight and coloured paints that creep beyond the dark lines.

Those distinct, organic visual imperfections are proof of Yuet Tung’s hand-painted craftsmanship and a testament to the artisans’ experience – as well as to their age, as they find it more challenging to paint with great precision.

“I was originally going to retire,” Tso said. “I’m 77, and some of the workers are over 80.”

Fully hand-drawn and painted porcelains have become far rarer, however. To take some of the strain off the elderly painters, Yuet Tung has introduced a special method of printing readymade “decals” of the outlines onto the porcelain, using a water-activated transfer paper.

The outlines are drawn on a tablet computer, then printed onto transfer paper, which is then cut out, moistened, and placed onto the porcelain. Once the outlines are transferred to the porcelain, the painters can fill in the colours by hand.

In the age of artificial intelligence, one may wonder whether they are tempted to join the AI bandwagon.

“You might say that AI can easily create a design, but AI creations are boring,” Tso said. “Even though all the old masters paint dragons, they all have their distinctive styles. AI doesn’t have that personalised touch.”

“People admire our creations for the handiwork,” he added.

The transfer paper technique retains some of the qualities of hand-painted outlines, such as a slightly raised texture, while precise linework retains a uniform thickness, Tso said. It also makes the products more affordable for customers, he added.

The technique was introduced by his daughter, Martina Tso, who runs the factory with her father.

Innovation

Martina Tso, who holds a bachelor’s degree in design from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a master’s degree in comparative literature from the University of Hong Kong, now manages much of Yuet Tung’s business operation.

Since joining the family business, she has modernised some of the factory’s designs for collaborations with brands such as Casetify and Lane Crawford.

She also designed a special series of tableware themed “Canton People,” displayed at the Palace Museum in Beijing in November last year during an exhibition organised by the Hong Kong Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau.

Adopting techniques found in traditional Chinese paintings, Martina Tso depicts scenes at cha chaan teng – Hong Kong-style cafes – and dim sum restaurants with distinctive booth seats and trolleys, and the city’s skyline in the background.

Images of a modern city, such as the Hong Kong Cultural Centre and high-rises, are juxtaposed with traditional motifs like the pink rose.

“In the old days, we relied mostly on exports, but over the past decade we’ve found more local collaborations,” the fourth-generation entrepreneur said. “What we do really represents Hong Kong’s heritage.”

The Hong Kong Museum of History has reopened its permanent exhibition with a new theme on the city’s shared “roots” with mainland China, nearly six years after it was closed for a revamp.

The government announced the reopening of “Hong Kong Story” in a statement on Wednesday.

“While telling the local story, the revamped exhibition also places greater emphasis on Hong Kong’s role as a ‘hub’, highlighting its shared roots with the motherland in historical development and its connections with the world as an international metropolis,” it said.

The exhibition at the museum in Tsim Sha Tsui used to be presented in chronological order, covering the city’s pre-historical period up to the handover in 1997.

It now revolves around four major themes, spread across 13 galleries.

The first theme, “Roots of Culture,” features artefacts that demonstrate Hong Kong “has long been rooted in the fertile soil of Chinese civilisation, sharing a cultural lineage with the motherland since ancient times.”

The “East Meets West” exhibits present Chinese and Western exchanges, “while still grounded in Chinese cultural traditions.”

Whereas the old exhibition said that Hong Kong Island was “ceded” to the British in 1841 following the Opium War, the revamped display describes the event as a “forcible seizure.”

It features a statue of Lin Zexu, a Qing dynasty official known for his role in the First Opium War from 1839 to 1842. The museum describes him as representing a “critical historical turning point when modern China confronted the incursions of Western powers.”

The third theme is dedicated to the “Coalition Against Japanese Aggression,” focusing on the role of Hong Kong communists in fighting the Japanese occupation during World War II.

“Hong Kong as a Global Metropolis” – the fourth theme – includes re-creations of cafes and cinemas as well as “Made in Hong Kong” products symbolising the city’s economic boom.

The final gallery, “Walking with the Motherland,“ showcases “Hong Kong’s return to the motherland, the implementation of ‘one country, two systems’, and a new chapter in its integration into the nation’s overall development.”

In October 2020, hundreds of visitors flocked to the museum on the last day of the old permanent exhibition, with some expressing concerns over potential political censorship.

While the old exhibition displayed photos of Hongkongers marching in support of student protesters in May 1989, before the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the revamp does not mention the bloody event on June 4, only referring to “political turmoil in the spring and summer of 1989.”

The reopened exhibition no longer shows portraits of the city’s British colonial governors or a natural history section.

As part of the revamp, the museum opened the National Security Exhibition Gallery in August 2024, occupying 1,100 square metres of space.