In Search of Seafood: A Trip to Cheung Chau

One relatively quiet aspect about HK's beauty in the grand scheme of tourism is the outlying islands of HK. In total, there are about 260 outlying islands in Hong Kong, but only a few are populated. Most visitors do not get the opportunity to visit all of these beautiful islands due to their abundance and the fact that most visitors don't stay long enough to get a chance to visit them (most trips to outlying islands require 3/4 to a full day trip).

I remember my first trip to one of the outlying islands my family and I made on a trip to HK back in 1987. It was cloudy all day, raining off and on and our host, uncle Simon, an avid sailor and former ship captain now HK harbourmaster rented a boat for a group of us to make the trip. I can't remember the exact island we went to but we left late in the afternoon and our sole purpose of heading to this island was to eat seafood. That's quite a trip to undertake just for a meal don't you think? Hong Kong people take their seafood seriously. And they damn well know how to cook it, too; unfortunately the great seafood in Dalian is bastardised by the northeastern chefs who cook it in heavy oil and spices or stew the hell out of the seafood and there are no natural flavours left. HK/Cantonese style cooking of seafood is generally steamed or stir-fried, lightly seasoned with soy sauce, green onions, ginger or garlic. We like to say in Cantonese, 真有鲜味, or literally, "this tastes pretty damn fresh".


Seafood street!
Fast forward 18 years from that last trip to the outlying islands (damn I'm getting old) and my friend Lynn and I decided to take her sister and mother (visiting from Toronto) to Cheung Chau 长州 (changzhou looks better in pinyin doesn't it?) about a 30-40 minute ferry ride from downtown Hong Kong.




Hong Kong island skyline from our ferry
We were again in search of seafood. Again it was a cloudy and rainy day and again we left late afternoon. Cheung Chau is a small island, it can be walked in half a day but the seafood is very fresh. The island is also famous for 2 things, it's shrimp paste 虾酱, a very strong pungent flavoured paste used to stir fry vegetables with and it's also famous for its windsurfing training centre on Tung Wan Beach, where Lee Lai Shan trained to win the first and only gold medal for Hong Kong.

Cheung Chau is a dumbbell-shaped island, with hills at the northern and southern ends and a village in between. The thin, middle part of the island is narrow enough that visitors can walk from Cheng Chau Harbour (where the ferry docks are) on its west side to Tung Wan Harbour on the east in just under five minutes.

Once you get off the ferry you'll notice soon after that there are no cars to be found. That's right, the island bans cars and the only mode of transportation are the two appendages dangling from your hips and bicycles for rent. The local population makes its living from the sea: fishing, seafood restaurants, water taxis, etc. There are lots of fishing vessels large and small of all colours in the small harbour. It's quite a sight.





To your immediate right and left are restaurants, stores and touts that offer monthly rental getaway apartments at very low prices (2000-3000$ HK). I don't know if I'd rent a place there for a month. The island is pretty small and it'd probably be boring after 2-3 days of exploring. If you're a beach bum you may find it more interesting than I would, though.


Not exactly Thailand or even HK's best beach but it'll do..
We were on a mission though, walking past the touts we started gazing at the restaurants and their merchandise, tanks and tanks of seafood of all kinds of fish, sea cucumber, clams, crabs, lobster (not indigenous to HK, they're flown in from Australia) and other shellfish.

Yes, friends from China: that Qingdao beer at the top left is actually $16 HK! On the mainland just 20 kms away it'd cost you 4-6HK$ in a Shenzhen restaurant!


Good thing, we didn't order this mutant, half orange/half green lobster...

We settled on a place and ordered from the set menu. That was a BIG mistake. We found out (after our dishes came) that the set menu is a scam. Yes, it's cheap but they offload the frozen and/or not so fresh seafood on you. We know this because the set menu items we ordered royally sucked, while the extra dishes we ordered from the menu were fabulous. So if you're visiting one of these types of restaurants on any of the islands, don't order from the set menu. Pay a bit more to get much better food!

From top left going clock wise: crap, crap, crap, and succulent steamed scallops with soy sauce and garlic that was ordered from the regular menu!




There was even some after dinner entertainment as a group of young men banging their drums and cymbals accompanying a dragon down the main road of Cheng Chau.