Bead Street’s fraying legacy: craft hub faces uncertain future as shops bow out

‘Storefronts have changed a lot these few years. More than half of these accessory shops are now eateries,’ one business owner says

In a cramped handicraft shop in Hong Kong’s Sham Shui Po neighbourhood, 70-year-old Jen Kwong was sifting through reels of embroidered and sequinned ribbons while other shoppers around her were hunched over containers of tiny beads and trinkets.

Kwong, who had worked for four decades during the golden age of Hong Kong’s textile manufacturing industry, still tailors and alters clothing for her grandchildren with her sewing machine at home.

But she feared Yu Chau Street, also known as “Bead Street” for its enclave of fabric and accessory shops, would soon become a thing of the past.

The streetscape, now dominated by eateries, is due to change even more as four accessory retailers on the block around Yu Chau Street, Ki Lung Street and Nam Cheong Street announced that they would be shutting their doors by the end of the month.

“This entire street used to be full of these types of crafting shops, but now, only a few are left,” Kwong said.

Reminiscing about the heyday of the manufacturing enclave, she recalled the long queues around the block just to shop at Japanese zip maker YKK Corporation, which shut its Sham Shui Po storefront in 2008.