More people are starting to show their interest in the history and culture of Hong Kong by going for a walk – and they’ve got plenty of options to choose from.

Joining pioneers such as Wan Chai Livelihood Museum, which has been recruiting residents to tell personal and historical tales of the area, are newbies Hide & Seek. It was set up in January by four Sha Tin natives in their 20s and 30s.

Hide & Seek

Rosita Chan Hei-ming, George Wan, Chan Yee-tak, and Tiffany Chan Hoi-ni saw rapid changes growing up in Sha Tin over the past three decades and were keen to illustrate the transformation that has taken place. Their earliest tours showed how urban planning was carried out in the New Territories new town.

Chan Yee-tak, a real-estate executive who studied urban planning in Britain, mapped out an itinerary in March which took in the Shing Mun River, Lek Yuen Estate and Shatin Town Plaza.

The route highlighted how public estates such as Lek Yuen, the first in Sha Tin, and amenities along Shing Mun River were built on reclaimed land, and showed how Sha Tin Town Plaza has evolved into what it is today.

Because all four hold full-time jobs, their tours are held only once a month. The initial events were offered for free but since May they began to charge HK$50 per head to cover operating costs.

Other Hide & Seek walking tours include visits to heritage sites buried among the skyscrapers and glitzy malls of Tsim Sha Tsui and another to the walled villages in Tai Wai.

While many people choose to shop or party during their time off, this group prefers to explore the older corners of the city and are now putting their knowledge to use.

Wan, an avid collector, plans to bring along small items from his personal hoard (coins, miniature weighing scales and the like) to show visitors during a tour to traditional shops on Shanghai Street in Yau Ma Tei.

“Those old shops are disappearing fast. We want to let more people know about them before they are gone,” he says. “The joss stick shops and tea sellers have been there for decades, with some more than 100 years old. Many still use old Chinese scales which show lots of traditional wisdom.”

With these simple devices, items are placed in a pan hung from a marked stick, and a counterweight hung at the opposite end is moved along the stick until balance is achieved.

Walk in Hong Kong

Walk in Hong Kong, co-founded by former political assistant Paul Chan Chi-yuen, offers some very knowledgeable guides. Chan started the enterprise with two friends, history researcher Haider Kikabhoy and travel writer Chow Chung-wah, after ending his stint as aide to the secretary for food and health.

While he was working for the government, a scandal broke about a local tour guide yelling at visitors for not doing more shopping, and this inspired Chan to offer a better alternative. A keen traveller who fondly recalls joining guided walks in Europe, he wondered about their potential here.

“Hong Kong is my home,” he says. “I want to show the good side of it to visitors. So I thought about the idea of organising walking tours in the city.”

Set up in 2013, Walk in Hong Kong now offers nearly 20 different itineraries. A night visit to Yau Ma Tei takes in its wholesale fruit market, Temple Street and the ’50s-era Mido Cafe, whose retro decor makes it a favoured location for local filmmakers.

“There are only five or six streets [on the route], but they epitomise ’70s Kowloon lifestyle to a tee,” Chan says. “We take participants to do palm reading and eat dessert on Temple Street, too. While everything has changed in Hong Kong, that ’70s ambience is still there.”

History comes to life

Kikabhoy, a history researcher at Chinese University, says their jaunts stand out because guides liven up the walk with lots of stories about local people.

“Yau Ma Tei fruit market was infamous during the ’70s as a hangout for drug dealers who hid drugs among the fruit,” he says. “We found a worker who has been there for 40 years to share what he witnessed back then. Visitors often burst out laughing when listening to these stories.”

Specialists in their field

Although they mostly rely on friends with special expertise to lead the walks – for instance, a lawyer, an architect and a media professional – each has received training and passed the test required for a licensed guide.

The architect leads tours of interesting buildings; and international relations scholar Simon Shen Xu-hui previously led a tour of the Happy Valley graveyard. He described it as an indicator of early globalisation, with the dead coming from six races and religions.

Another tour, led by political scientist Ray Yep Kin-man from City University who is an expert on the 1967 riots, retraced the steps taken by leftists in the anti-colonial demonstrations in North Point, which was a key communist stronghold at the time.

“We shared stories about how the home-made ‘pineapple bombs’ were put together,” Yep says. “Instead of reading from a textbook, a walking tour gives people a fun and colourful way of viewing these important events.”

Paul Chan leads the night tours of Yau Ma Tei, where he grew up; while Kikabhoy guides the walks around Wan Chai – an area he knows well, as it is home to his 90-year-old grandmother.

“I have been frequenting Wan Chai my whole life. My grandmother has told me many stories about life in the area … how children used to play hopscotch on the covered walkways, even during rush hours,” Kikabhoy says.

And as a researcher, he has been able to unearth interesting details about the district to share with visitors. For example, he can point out that the curvaceous old Wan Chai Market, completed in 1937, was built in the Bauhaus style that was influenced by the “streamline moderne” movement.

The old civilian airport in Singapore and the central market in Phnom Penh were also built in the same style in the same year.

Growing tension

In Sheung Shui, growing tension over congestion, litter and other problems caused by parallel traders has prompted Chan Shing-yin to start doing tours around his home town to help visitors understand how these changes have affected life in the area.

A third-generation resident of Sheung Shui, Chan organises the walks for the Society for Indigenous Learning. The group organises farming activities, heritage tours, recycling ventures and the like, in hopes that people will have a better appreciation for the area’s history.

His grandfather moved there in the ’40s, and worked at an electronics shop. His father followed eventually, establishing the family’s own electronics business in the ’80s.

People have long converged there without conflict as they came to do business, he says.

“But today our community is torn by clashes between visitors and residents because Sheung Shui has become a haven for parallel traders. I am saddened by it,” he says. “We hope that our tour can help visitors understand the development of the district and how it has evolved into what it is today.”