Christopher DeWolf

Hong Kong, Montreal

Cities, beer, stuff. Always too 心急. 🇭🇰🇨🇦Author of 'Borrowed Spaces: Life Between the Cracks of Modern Hong Kong'. Avatar by Colette Holstein.

Articles

Hong Kong’s historical shops preserve city’s unique charm and craftsmanship

4 days ago | scmp.com | Christopher DeWolf

In 2018, when a wave of long-standing Hong Kong shops closed because of rising rents and owners taking their retirement, Ian Ma Kei-loc felt compelled to act. He began visiting old shops to speak to their owners and document their stories. “I just wanted to make a simple record in case they disappeared,” he says.
Happy Valley’s Cemeteries: A Jewish Burial Ground Built on Cultural Exchange

1 week ago | zolimacitymag.com | Christopher DeWolf

Like many of Hong Kong’s other historic cemeteries, the city’s Jewish burial ground is in Happy Valley – but not where you’d expect it to be. Instead of on the hillside overlooking the race course, alongside the Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu and Parsi cemeteries, it’s in the upper part of the valley, tucked behind a Buddhist nunnery and overshadowed by the Jockey Club’s towering Shan Kwong Road clubhouse.
The MTR Turns 45: What’s Left of the KCR?

1 week ago | zolimacitymag.com | Christopher DeWolf

There’s a treasure trove of MTR history hidden in a discreet corner of Hung Hom Station. To access the Station Rail Voyage exhibition, you need to first register online for a free visit, then make your way past fast-food kiosks and a waiting area for the slow train to China. Then you’ll discover decades of artefacts from Hong Kong’s renowned metro system: maps, posters, control panels, even decommissioned trains that you can board for a journey back in time.
Chinese Restaurants, the Next Frontier for Hong Kong Craft Beer

2 weeks ago | zolimacitymag.com | Christopher DeWolf

The Young Master sits serenely in a private room at the back of Bowrington Bridge Hot Pot. Beefy steam fills the air as he watches his team of beermakers embark on a night of celebration. Someone uses a chopstick to pop open a large bottle of beer and pours it ceremoniously in the waiting glasses of the assembled diners. “Jam2 bui1 (飲杯)!” they exclaim, clinking their small glasses together in a roar of festive approval.
What’s Behind the Rise of Specialty Coffee in Hong Kong

1 month ago | zolimacitymag.com | Christopher DeWolf

Shek Wu Hui is a bustling old market town, an old-fashioned kind of place where goods of all kinds spill out from vintage walkup buildings: lively but far from trendy. It’s certainly not the kind of place where you’d expect to find specialty coffee. And yet, there it is, in a white-walled shop with local art on the walls, French electropop group playing on the stereo and a crowd of twentysomething regulars chatting with the barista as he pulls shots of espresso from a Marzocco machine.
Happy Valley Cemeteries: 470 Graves Tell the Story of Japanese Hong Kong

1 month ago | zolimacitymag.com | Christopher DeWolf

There is not a living soul in sight at the Hong Kong Cemetery on a cool March afternoon. Birdsong pierces the dull roar of traffic heading to the nearby Aberdeen Tunnel. Towards the back of the graveyard, past monuments to fallen British soldiers and seemingly countless people who died of malaria in the 1850s, there is an unusual cluster of tall, narrow tombstones: Japanese graves.
The Lost Mansions of the Mid-Levels, Part V: Paul Chater’s Marble Hall

1 month ago | zolimacitymag.com | Christopher DeWolf

Sir Catchick Paul Chater was a tycoon like none other. Not only did he have a hand in many of colonial Hong Kong’s most pivotal enterprises, from Jardines to Dairy Farm to Hongkong Electric to The Wharf, he literally reshaped the city. In 1889, a few decades after arriving in Hong Kong from his native Calcutta, where he was born into a family of Armenian origin, he founded Hongkong Land and laid the groundwork for Hong Kong’s first major land reclamation project.
How a rubbish dump became an eco-haven in Hong Kong

2 months ago | scmp.com | Christopher DeWolf

“I have always been interested in unusual projects,” says architect Corrin Chan. And what could be more unusual than a campground in an old rubbish tip? E-Co Village, which opened last year near Lohas Park in Tseung Kwan O, is an initiative by the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals (TWGH) charity to provide a fun space for families and school groups to connect with the great outdoors while learning about environmental sustainability.
How Tai On Coffee and Tea Revived a Vintage Bing Sutt

2 months ago | zolimacitymag.com | Christopher DeWolf

It’s late on a Monday morning and a low buzz of conversation fills Tai On Coffee and Tea. Customers are seated in vintage wood booths, munching on egg tarts and breakfast sets of luncheon meat noodles, as a ballad by Cantopop star Hacken Lee plays over the stereo. On the surface, it’s the picture of a classic Hong Kong-style café, and indeed, Tai On has stood at 830 Canton Road in Yau Ma Tei since 1969. But a closer look reveals this is anything but a typical bing sutt or cha chaan teng.
How the Oil Street Artists' Village Sparked a Creative Awakening

2 months ago | zolimacitymag.com | Christopher DeWolf

Sometimes the toughest times are the most rewarding. In the final years of the 20th century, Hong Kong was still reeling from the Asian financial crisis of 1997. The economy was in stubborn recession. The Hang Seng Index had lost nearly two thirds of its value. In the spring of 1999, the city’s unemployment rate hit an all-time high of 6.3 percent. Faced with a downturn in the property market, the government had suspended all sales of its own property.