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It’s easy to get drawn into the bubble of the Tsim Sha Tsui section of Hong Kong, what with high rise corporate hotels, acres of restaurants with meat and fish flown in daily, and staggeringly gorgeous views of Victoria Harbour. As a result, it’s also easy to forget how much fun it is to go slumming a few more realistic neighborhoods north to Yau Ma Tei. This is where real life takes place in Hong Kong (as real as life gets in the World City). Here, you’ve got your everyday-sized temples housing the more modestly revered earth and maritime goddesses, work-a-day markets and homey eateries.

The markets are the big draw here for visitors and locals. Arrays of seafood and produce are unmatched in freshness, color and choices. And by fresh, I mean fresh – the asparagus still has dirt being washed from it, and the bits of fish are still moving from being hacked moments before, and swimming just moments before that. Trade is brisk, and tourists yield (or else!) to earnest local grandmothers buying ingredients for dinner.

Yau Ma Tei is a cozy little section to pick up some cheap jade jewelry, enjoy a mid-morning cup of green tea, sniff the aroma of incense wafting from the openings of temples, or tuck into a light lunch of dim sum.

This entry was posted on November 26, 2012 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Food, Travel with tags jade market kowloon, produce market hong kong, Tsim Shu Tsui Hong Kong, Yau Ma Tei Hong Kong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.