Hong Kong residential estate Richland Gardens has sparked controversy after announcing the hiring of non-local workers as security guards.

The owners’ corporation of Richland Gardens – a government-subsidised housing estate in Kowloon Bay – announced on Threads on Monday that its management company was training a group of “non-local security guards,” who started working on Monday.

The announcement also included a photo of 30 security guards in blue and black uniforms.

According to the owners’ corporation, most of the security guards came from Guangdong province and are fluent in Cantonese. They have also obtained certificates after completing relevant security training courses in Hong Kong.

The estate’s management company turned to non-local hires after finding it difficult to hire full-time local security guards, the Threads post said.

“Most Hong Kong security guards prefer to work part-time. After the management company took over security work in 2023, it had seen a turnover of more than 200 security guards,” the Chinese-language post read.

The move has sparked criticism online, with netizens questioning why the estate chose to hire non-local workers amid the rising unemployment rate in the city.

Some asked whether the management company turned to non-local hiring to save labour costs.

In the Facebook group “We Are Richland Garden-ers,” some netizens said they were worried about the estate’s security, as they could not verify if the non-local workers had committed any crimes in mainland China.

The owners’ corporation defended the hiring and denied it was to save costs, saying that the salaries of non-local security guards are “similar” to those of local staff.

Richland Gardens’ management company is Pacific Extend, according to the owners’ corporation.

Last year, Pacific Extend – a subsidiary of Hong Kong conglomerate Shui On Group’s SOCAM Development – was acquired by Chinese firm Wuhan Tianyuan Property Management, the Hong Kong Economic Times reported.

Expanded schemes for non-local workers

In 2023, the Hong Kong government increased the quota for non-local workers in the construction and transport industries and in residential care homes, citing a labour shortage.

It also launched the Enhanced Supplementary Labour Scheme (ESLS) in September 2023, which allows Hong Kong employers to import workers for 26 types of jobs that were previously only open to local residents, such as security guards, cashiers, hair stylists, sales assistants, and waiters.

In January, the labour and welfare chief Chris Sun told the legislature that as of December 31, a total of 96,195 non-local workers had been approved to work in Hong Kong, including 4,984 working as security guards.

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.”