飲食業與街市：由街邊擔挑到食物安全中心

1. 1842: the first public market

On 16 May 1842 Hong Kong’s first public market opened at the Central Market. The date precedes much of what we would call municipal government: a city first needs a place where food is bought and sold together before hygiene and price can be regulated at all. From the start the market was not only an economic facility but a space the state could see, charge and inspect.

In 1844 the ethnic boundary of that same space was redrawn. From 1844 the Central Market area, where the present Central Market stands, had been a Chinese residential and business district but was redefined as an area for whites only. The ground under the market was also a line of racial order; the shoppers and the displaced lived on two sides of one street.

2. Licences and the street: writing hawkers into law

An 1846 ordinance required Chinese hawkers and Chinese boats in Hong Kong waters to obtain licences. In 1858, an ordinance prohibited unlicensed hawkers from selling in the street, and a market ordinance passed that May specified what food licensed hawkers could sell in markets. Together they set a clear division: clear the street, bring trade indoors, and let government list what may be sold inside.

The numbers show the size of the trade. From 1871 the Government recorded hawker numbers: 2,425 that year, 4.9 per cent of the employed population; by 1891 it had risen to 5,661, or 5.5 per cent. Clearing unlicensed hawkers was therefore not a matter of a few people but of a sector worth several percentage points of employment — which explains why later clearance operations provoked conflict.

3. Market buildings: Western Market, Wan Chai, Central

In 1906 the North Block of the Western Market on Des Voeux Road Central was completed — the Western Market of today, recorded as the oldest surviving market building in Hong Kong. It is a reminder that a market is not only a place of exchange but a public building with a facade, a structure and a cost: a city willing to build a house for food shopping.

On 1 April 1937 the second-generation Wan Chai Market opened, built in German Bauhaus style. Two years later, on 3 May 1939, the new Central Market officially opened. These markets followed one logic: move open-air, damp, mixed trade into a roofed space with drainage and management. The style could be Bauhaus; the purpose was always hygiene.

4. Restaurants and the post-war recovery

Restaurants appear in the record later. In 1943 Kowloon had several hundred restaurants and catering was one of the fastest-recovering trades — written under Japanese occupation, this is not prosperity but evidence that people kept cooking and selling amid shortage because demand was the hardest thing of all. As population returned after the war, restaurants expanded alongside markets.

Governance did not automatically keep up. On 26 October 1946 the Government cleared unlicensed hawkers in Portland Street, Yau Ma Tei; the Chinese hawker Wong Shui-cheung was kicked to death by an Indian member of the riot squad, triggering large-scale clashes, with British troops called in, more than ten injured and 35 arrested. After that day “clearance” was no longer merely a municipal technique but a political event people remembered. On 12 November 1952 the Hong Kong and Kowloon Hawkers’ Association was established, turning hawkers from objects of management into an organised party.

5. Three Urban Council tools: inheritance, permitted areas, clearance

On 1 July 1970 the Urban Council introduced a new hawker management system: on the death of a licensee the licence had to be returned and could not be transferred, though a spouse could apply for discretionary consideration for non-cooked-food fixed pitches. The same day brought hawker protests. The point is crucial: a licence was not a piece of paper but a family’s right to inherit a livelihood, so changing the rule changed inheritance.

On 14 March 1975 the Council turned to space. the first hawker permitted areas were drawn, initially covering twenty streets in Kowloon and allowing trading only during designated hours. From “no selling” to “this place, this time”, regulation shifted from prohibition to scheduling.

On 17 March 1993 the direction reversed. the Urban Council announced that street hawkers in urban areas would be phased out by 1 April 1996. Licensing, zoning and clearance were three tools used by one body on one trade, each time moving the line between hygiene and livelihood.

6. Food safety and markets as assets

On 26 October 1988, 73 people fell ill after eating choi sum bought from a Kowloon market and were sent to hospital. Such incidents explain where regulation went next: the problem was not the market building but residues upstream in the supply chain. On 1 January 2000 the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department took over hawker management from the Urban and Regional Councils, ending the council era and concentrating management in one department. On 25 July 2001 the department held the first monthly market rest day, requiring live poultry stalls to slaughter remaining birds before noon.

In the same period markets turned from public facilities into tradable assets. On 20 July 2005 the Court of Final Appeal ruled that the Housing Authority’s sale of markets, shopping centres and car parks was lawful. The judgment changed the nature of the question: a market was no longer only a service but a property that could be valued and sold.

Food safety rules followed. On 2 May 2006 the department established the Centre for Food Safety to regulate the safety of food sold in Hong Kong. On 8 April 2011 the Food Safety Ordinance required importers and distributors to register with the department. From an ordinance listing what may be sold in a market to registration of importers, the object of regulation moved from the stall to the whole chain.