Reviews & Articles

Modernist Wah Fu Estate
John BATTEN
at 4:42pm on 30th January 2025

(An article about the modernist architecture of Wah Fu Estate and the surrounding heritage and vernacular culture, published in The Correspondent, the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong's magazine)

Hong Kong’s Vernacular Icons

by John Batten

Crowded streets and shopping, The Peak, and the ‘Star’ Ferry crisscrossing Victoria Harbour surrounded by the city’s high-rises: all are synonymous with Hong Kong. Closer to home, TVB’s Freddy the weatherman, the smell of roasted chestnuts or sweet potato in winter, and the distinctive warning sound of Hong Kong’s pedestrian crossings, are always associated with the city by Hong Kongers and frequent visitors. Icons can be universal, or – let’s not be too exceptional or snobby – personal: your mother’s homemade soup is certainly iconic.

Roasting chestnuts on the street, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, 22 December 2024 (photo: John Batten)

For a small place, Hong Kong is highly localised with neighbourhoods having distinct personalities. Sea and island life in Cheung Chau is different from growing up amongst the industrial and residential estates of Tsuen Wan, Kwun Tong or Kwai Chung. Districts have an unconscious territorial claim on its residents and although the city’s cultural identity appears homogenous, it is greatly nuanced at ground-level. Hong Kong’s famous milk tea, strained and mixed with condensed milk, can be found throughout the city, but drinking it in a favourite neighbourhood cha chan teng (a Hong Kong-style café) makes it special. When told that, “That café has famous milk tea,” local pride is bestowing a ‘higher-level’ of status on Hong Kong’s universal milk tea!

Breakfast with your bird, Wah Fu Cafe, Wah Fu, 8 January 2024 Note: in the photograph above the table is an aerial view of Wah Fu Estate showing the steep slope on which it is built. (photo: John Batten)

Although I live in Sheung Wan, one of Hong Kong’s oldest and historic areas, I am also a big fan of Wah Fu Estate and its surroundings. Located between Pokfulam and Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island’s south-side, Wah Fu is representative of Hong Kong urban life and a microcosm of the city's vernacular culture. It is an excellent area to walk and appreciate some of the city’s alternative icons.

Inaugurated in 1968 and fully developed by 1971, the estate - with its contemporary equivalent, Kowloon’s Choi Hung Estate – are both exemplary examples of modernist architectural design and both are sadly to be demolished in the next ten years. Backed by the visionary Michael Wright, Hong Kong’s Director of Public Works in the 1960s, the design of Wah Fu was headed by Donald Liao, the Housing Authority’s then Chief Architect. Liao was a former student and employee of Gordon Brown who opened the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Architecture in 1950 and who designed the modernist Wah Yan College in Wan Chai in 1953. The school’s steep site has similar design solutions as Wah Fu.

Wah Fu Estate, housing and podium, with view to Lantau Island, Wah Fu, Hong Kong, 2 December 2025 (photo: John Batten)

Situated on a hillside overlooking the East Lamma Channel, Wah Fu Estate rises in blocks along engineered terraces, positioned to best capture the site’s natural elements. Each residential unit opens onto a long connecting corridor with windows at the front and rear of the unit, giving good cross-air ventilation with many having sea views.

When planned, Wah Fu was designed as a self-contained community. Unfortunately, this was also through necessity: Wah Fu’s transport links were originally poor. Before the South Island MTR line opened, its expected 50,000 residents relied on buses that were frequently caught in traffic congestion. If a traffic jam could be iconic, then the daily congested Aberdeen Tunnel would be a contender.

Wah Fu has a central shopping centre and open-air podium that includes a wet market, restaurants, bakeries, schools, public library and post office, hardware and clothing shops, hairdressers, social service organisations and doctors’ clinics. It is all old-style, the Housing Authority retains management of the site and many businesses have been there for decades. Walking around the estate is easy, open to the general public and its many open spaces are landscaped with trees, seating and exercise areas.

Doctor's surgery waiting room, with reflections, including of person walking past, Wah Fu, Hong Kong, 8 January 2025 (photo: John Batten)

Wah Fu Estate’s basement wet market has the bustle of any of the city’s markets: the vendors yelling bargains to entice customers at the end of the day and each market stall is an example of Hong Kong’s iconic market style: hand-written signage, red plastic overhead light-shades, products separated with exact cardboard or stacked foam-board box organisation, random chairs for those that need a chair and always a smokers’ corner. On the estate’s ground floor podium are two classic cha chan teng (Hong Kong-style cafés), Silver Café and the Wah Fu Café. The latter has a resident black cat – very friendly, except at around 3pm when schoolchildren pass and she hides under the exterior cake counter, avoiding overly vigorous children’s hands. Other cafés, shops and facilities are also located in the estate’s higher hillside blocks and podiums.

Shopping in Wah Fu Market, Wah Fu, Hong Kong, 2 December 2024 (photo: John Batten)

Wah Fu Cafe, with its outdoor cake counter, Wah Fu, Hong Kong, 8 January 2025 (photo: John Batten)

Walking around the estate gives an overview of the generous space, excellent architecture and thoughtfulness of the city’s first generation public housing. After its demolition, the estate will be sold to developers to monetarize this overly generous space and build private housing with sea views, similar to nearby Cyberport. High-rise public housing will then be built along Pokfulam Road. The eventual extension of the South Island MTR line might be cost-effective with Wah Fu’s consequent higher density population.

Early Western mariners visiting the South China coast knew of the fresh water that could be easily collected at Waterfall Bay, located directly below Wah Fu. But, if you walk down the hill in the other direction towards Wah Kwai Estate, through the hillside park (note the morning or afternoon tai chi practitioners) or take the long bridge and elevator linking Wah Fu to Wah Kwai, you will discover a wonderland of ceramic household gods, all types of Guanyin, Buddhas, the Monkey King etc, mixed-in with Mickey Mouse, Hello Kitty and other toys. The local uncles have constructed terraces and gardens to house thousands of abandoned gods – delivered by residents moving house or carefully put aside by the local cleaners. Despite some social media attention, it remains a poignant, quiet and unexpected oasis. In summer, hardy local residents swim and sit in the beautifully makeshift shelters built overlooking the sea.

Gods on hillside below Wah Fu, Hong Kong, 8 November 2023 (photo: John Batten)

Similar repositories for gods can be seen throughout Hong Kong, often found beside hand-built altars and community gardens behind housing estates in greenbelt areas. In Development Bureau/Hong Kong government-speak, such informal structures built on government land without permission are “tolerated” – until they are not, and then a non-occupation or demolition order will be issued. In the meantime, Wah Fu’s thousands of ‘illegal’ hillside gods have some protection from the small, but approved Tin Hau temple constructed on the seafront (known as Chicken and Dragon Bay) in front of the hillside. The celestial force of Tin Hau and these extra gods gives Aberdeen Harbour’s resident fishing boats and passing ships, including huge container ships, great protection!

Back of Tin Hau temple, with shelter and swimmer at Chicken & Dragon Bay looking towards Ap Lei Chau, below Wah Fu, Hong Kong, 8 November 2023 (photo: John Batten)

Not far away, back up the hill, is Béthanie, the historic former 19^th century French missionary retreat and religious printing press premises. Now a campus for the Academy for the Performing Arts, Béthanie has remnants of the area’s former Dairy Farm, including milking sheds now converted as theatres. Across the road is Pokfulam Village, downstream from The Peak’s water catchment area and Pokfulam Reservoir and its country park. The village is one of Hong Kong Island’s few remaining semi-rural villages and has its own fire dragon celebrations during the mid-Autumn Festival, rivalling the more famous Tai Hang Fire Dragon Festival. Pokfulam Village celebrated the 100^th anniversary of its fire dragon ten years ago. The special 100 metre-long dragon made from straw tightly held by wire required everybody, including casual viewers who came to see the performance, to help the smoky task of placing thousands of long incense sticks into the dragon’s straw body.

Wah Fu Estate’s main bus depot is also a 1960s classic. Rows of open-air shelters, with buses to all parts of Hong Kong and a circular shuttle bus (#48) to the MTR’s South Island Line. Bus #41A is a former commuter route linking Wah Fu to the North Point ferry. It is also one of Hong Kong’s unheralded and great bus trips. A journey up-front top deck takes you through Aberdeen, Wong Chuk Hang, past Ocean Park and its iconic pandas, then over the hill with great views overlooking Deepwater Bay. The bus follows the hilly contours overlooking Happy Valley and past the remnants of the old Tiger Balm Gardens and Lai Tak Tsuen with its distinctive circular public housing design. Arriving in North Point, the bus passes near the under-renovation historic State Theatre and the Sunbeam Theatre, an iconic Cantonese opera venue, which will close and be converted into a church’s premises after May 2025. The bus trip terminates at the North Point Ferry Pier.

Sunbeam Theatre neon sign, North Point, Hong Kong, 16 October 2024 (photo: John Batten)

Ferries to Kowloon City Pier, which is actually located in To Kwa Wan, depart every half-hour. It is then a short walk to the Cattle Depot Artist Village, housed in a former abattoir of beautiful Chinese-style colonial vernacular architecture. The ferry trip is also a relaxed way to get to the new Kai Tak Sports Park and its large stadium; Hong Kong’s latest, newest, biggest must-be icon.