Stalls, fortune tellers and open-air seafood under the flyover, in the market that has supplied a hundred Hong Kong films with a backdrop.
Temple Street runs about a kilometre through Yau Ma Tei and Jordan, and from around six in the evening it fills with stalls. It is the best-known night market in Hong Kong and it has appeared in a very large number of films.
Named for the Tin Hau Temple partway along it.
What is sold
Watches, phone cases, luggage, t-shirts, jade, opera CDs, novelty goods, and a substantial quantity of counterfeit merchandise. Very little of it is remarkable and almost none of it is a bargain unless you enjoy the process.
Bargaining is expected. Open around a third of the asking price, settle near half, and be willing to walk. Cash.
The food
This is the actual reason to come.
Open-air seafood — plastic tables set out in the street around the Jordan end, with tanks of live fish and prawns, cooked to order. Typhoon shelter crab, razor clams with garlic, salt-and-pepper squid, stir-fried clams in black bean.
Clay pot rice — bo zai fan — rice cooked over charcoal in a small earthenware pot with Chinese sausage, chicken or eel, with soy poured over at the table and a crust of scorched rice at the bottom that is the point of the dish. It takes twenty minutes to cook and it is worth the wait. Hing Kee is the long-standing name.
Hot pot, noodle shops, and stalls doing curry fish balls and stinky tofu.
The fortune tellers
At the Yau Ma Tei end, near the temple, a row of stalls offering palmistry, face reading, kau chim stick divination and bird fortune telling — where a small finch hops out of a cage and selects a card. Several read in English.
It is a genuine trade with genuine customers, not a tourist arrangement.
Cantonese opera in the street
Amateur singers perform Cantonese opera excerpts near the temple most evenings, accompanied by small ensembles, singing for tips. It is informal, it varies enormously in quality, and it is one of the last places you will hear the form performed casually.
Tin Hau Temple
Dedicated to the sea goddess, dating in this location from the 1870s, with a banyan-shaded forecourt where men play Chinese chess. Free, and worth ten minutes.
The other markets
Ladies’ Market on Tung Choi Street in Mong Kok — clothing and accessories, afternoon into evening.
Flower Market and Goldfish Market in Mong Kok, and the Bird Garden at Yuen Po Street, which are all genuinely local and much more interesting than the tourist markets.
Jade Market in Yau Ma Tei, indoors, where you should assume you cannot tell real jade from treated and buy accordingly.
Apliu Street in Sham Shui Po for electronics.
Practicalities
Roughly 6pm to midnight, busiest from eight. Cash.
Jordan MTR exit A, or Yau Ma Tei exit C. It is a ten-minute walk from Tsim Sha Tsui.
