Some cool chinese wholesalers photos:
Wing Kut Street Shoppers
Image by ROSS HONG KONG
A renowned shopping street in Central Hong Kong identified for its "bits and bobs".
Central District, Hong Kong
www.scmp.com/article/292830/wing-kut-street
Wing Kut Street
Sunday, 05 September, 1999, 12:00am
Dora Chan
One particular of the several alleys which lie in between Des Voeux Road Central and Queen’s Road Central in Sheung Wan, Wing Kut Street is lined with retailers and stallholders specialising in costume jewellery and accessories, stamps and coins.
Built by private developers in the 1860s, it was a private road till the early 1900s. It is a single of many alleys to the west of Central Marketplace provided fortunate names starting with ‘Wing’ (forever) – its neighbours include Wing Sing Street, Wing Wo Street and Wing On Street (formerly identified as ‘cloth alley’) Kut, Sing, Wo and On, mean ‘lucky’, ‘win’, ‘peace’ and ‘content’ respectively. The names have been an attempt by the developers to rid the region of the negative luck that had plagued it. As soon as known as ‘Chinatown’, the region west of Central Industry was 1st settled by the Chinese labourers who flooded into the new British colony.
By the 1840s, it was an overcrowded, unsanitary sprawl of squatter huts. In 1851, almost 500 houses have been destroyed and 22 individuals killed by a disastrous fire.’It was bound to happen,’ writes historian John Luff in the Hong Kong Story. ‘On December 28, a Chinese, preparing a meal, allowed the fire to get out of handle. In a moment the hut was in flames, and within minutes the fire, fanned by a vicious gale, had the entire area in flames.’ It could have been a lot worse had the Sappers not created a firebreak by destroying an region.
Fame came to Wing Kut Street with the opening of the upmarket Luk Yu tea property in 1933. Named following a renowned tea gourmet from the Tang Dynasty, more than a thousand years ago, its costly dim sum, classy interior, great meals and fragrant tea drew a respectable, wealthy clientele, which includes well-known actors and actresses. Other restaurants and nightclubs, like Hong Kong’s very first ballroom, the Mye Lau (Fancy Residence), opened at the Des Voeux Road end of Wing Kut Street. It became a well-known entertainment and dining district for middle-class Chinese in the 1950s. The crowds attracted meals stalls and tiny factory outlet clothes shops. Redevelopment forced Luk Yu to move into Stanley Street in 1976, followed by the other huge, trendy restaurants. But the stalls remained.
The in 1980, the Shing Lee Commercial Centre opened, attracting a various kind of visitor. With its 150, tiny shop spaces spread over four storeys, it attracted small retail organizations, like costume jewellers, and shops promoting antiques, coins and stamps. A single of the biggest and very best-identified costumer jewellers is Lam Chan Kee, with branches in Sheung Wan, Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui. It started as a street stall in nearby Gilman’s Bazaar in the early ’80s and quickly expanded into a ground-floor shop on Wing Kut Street. As costume jewellery grew in popularity in the course of the ’80s, more wholesalers moved to the street, first to tiny spaces in Shing Lee, then into bigger shops.
From the mid-1980s, stamp and coin collectors began taking their places in the Shing Lee, which had become known as ‘stamp street’ by the mid-’90s.
Cheng Bo-hung, owner of the Commonwealth Collections Business (Shop 5, 1/F Shing Lee Commercial Centre) is a respected historian and collector of stamps, coins, notes and postcards, and has written four books on the subjects. He is vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Stamp and Coin Dealers’ Association and an honorary adviser of the Hong Kong Museum of History. ‘By the end of 1996 Shing Lee’s corridors had been so packed with stamp collectors it was literally impossible to move!’ recalls Cheng. With the handover approaching, people queued up to acquire anything symbolic of the British era and stamps, particularly these imprinted with the queen’s head, became hot things for speculators.
‘It was crazy!’ says Cheng. ‘The price of a set of one particular hundred, .80 queen’s head stamps issued in 1992 was driven up to as significantly as ,000.’ The same set of stamps can now be purchased for about .
Lee Sau-tak’s Chinese paint-brush stall is the oldest and one of the most eye-catching. It hasn’t changed for 41 years. Lively, 75-year-old Lee (left) says he is right here to remain. His paint-brushes, imported from China, cost from for a set of eight. The set pictured charges .
Chung Kee (37 Wing Kut Street) is a branch of the Wellington Street shop, renowned for its wonton meen – large, fresh prawns, rich broth and trademark-thin noodles.
Amongst the largest and busiest jewellery shops on the street, Lai Fa has the ideal collection of Laotian and Indonesian silk scarfs (from ), ethnic bags, Indian bracelets and diamante hair accessories.
Imitation Jewellery Company (11B) and the Hong Kong Imitation Jewellery Business (18) have massive collections of trendy, beaded ethnic wrist bands and necklaces (from ). Hong Kong Imitation Jewellery also sells fake tattoo kits ( every single) and bands ( – ).
The Sun Organization (20 Wing Kut Street) has lovely, devore and embroidered scarves from Korea.
Feather specialist Chung Leung Ching Kee (7 Wing Wo Street) stocks more than 100 varieties of feathers, in a rainbow of colours as nicely as organic patterns (from for a pack of ten). It also sells feather dusters, stoles (from for two metres) and masks (pictured, ).