Sheung Wan When the Dried Seafood Speaks

Sheung Wan When the Dried Seafood Speaks

Sheung Wan sits west of Central on Hong Kong Island, and it is the neighborhood that the skyscraper district doesn't want you to know about — older, denser, more fragrant, and infinitely more interesting per square meter. The streets climb from the harbor to the Mid-Levels in a tangle of escalators, stairways, and lanes so narrow you can touch both walls.

Des Voeux Road West is the dried seafood district — shop after shop of shark fin, abalone, dried shrimp, and scallops stacked in bins and baskets that give off a perfume so concentrated it's almost architectural. Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road burns incense coils the size of wagon wheels, and the smoke hangs in the air like fog that chose to stay, filling the temple with a haze that turns the red altars and gold lettering into something half-seen and wholly felt.

Tai Cheong Bakery on Lyndhurst Terrace makes egg tarts with a crust that shatters and a custard that wobbles, and the queue at three in the afternoon is the neighborhood's unofficial census. Eat one standing on the street because there are no seats and the tart is better warm and slightly inconvenient. Walk uphill to PMQ — a former police married quarters converted into a design and arts complex — where the studios and shops sell work by Hong Kong designers who are making things that the malls in Central have never heard of.

Insider tip: Take the Mid-Levels Escalator from Central through Sheung Wan — the world's longest outdoor covered escalator system — and step off at every cross street. Each level reveals a different layer of the neighborhood: wet markets, antique shops, coffee roasters, temples, and the kind of tiny noodle stalls that don't have menus because there's only one thing and it's perfect.